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29
At the request of the Principal Medical Officer I furnished the Local
Government Board with a list of the Medical Officers of Health (and their
districts) with whom I had communicated in regard to blankets that had
already been distributed, it being necessary that the Board should ascertain if
the notice given by your Medical Officer of Health had been followed up.
For similar reasons lists of those Metropolitan Districts to which blankets had
been consigned were sent to the Medical Officer of Health for the London
County Council.
A large quantity of these goods had been bought by the Managers of
Institutions, Convents, Industrial Homes, &c., who were, no doubt, attracted
by the low prices they were offered at.
It was a fortunate circumstance that most of such purchasers had hitherto
held them in reserve, and had not issued them for use to those under their
charge, otherwise outbreaks of Enteric Fever, such as occurred on the
"Cornwall" Training Ship in the Thames would, in all probability, have
been repeated all over the country.
This enquiry established the important fact that the bacillus typhosus can
retain activity in infected articles for so long a period as six months; the
most lengthy case of similar persistent infection previously recorded not
having exceeded three months.
Throughout this investigation it was my desire to avoid, as far as possible,
giving publicity to the names of the different towns to which these blankets
were distributed, and thus possibly injuriously affect, at that early part of the
season, their several claims to attraction as holiday resorts. It was regrettable,
therefore, to find that some journalists had apparently no such scruples, and
columns of the Press were filled with the fullest details procured by their
agents scattered throughout the kingdom.
This, however, may not have been without advantage to the public welfare,
as attention was so forcibly directed to the matter that, in all likelihood, we
shall never again experience a repetition of such a wholesale dissemination of
filthy, and, in some cases, infected articles.
ENTERIC FEVER AND SHELLFISH.
During 1903, nine instances were brought to my notice where Enteric
Fever was attributed to the consumption of shellfish sold in the City. Of
these, oysters were the vehicle in five cases, and mussels in the other four.
It will be observed that with the exception of the case reported in June all
the others occurred during the last three months of the year, six of these
being in December.