View report page

51
much inconvenience to the Ambulance Service. As the infants are always
weaned at once, it is necessary to isolate the infected person for observation at
the wharf for ten days or a fortnight.
The Board are desirous that in cases of Small-pox the separation of the
mother and suckling infant should take place at the home of the patient, and
not at the wharf. Instructions were therefore given which will ensure, as far
as possible, that mothers should be made aware of the practice above referred
to, and every endeavour will be made to dissuade them from accompanying
their children, or taking them with her to the wharf, as the case may be.
MIDWIVES AND PUERPERAL FEVER.
On the 1st August a case of Puerperal Septicæsmia was notified at a house
in the Minories. It having been ascertained that the midwife attending the
patient was a maternity nurse residing at Islington, the facts were at once
reported to the Medical Officer of Health for that District, with a view to his
taking such steps as he might consider necessary to prevent the spread of
infection. This was the only case of the kind reported during the year.
TUBERCULOSIS (Consumption).
This subject, as in the two previous years, has received much attention,
especially the education of the public as to the disgusting and dangerous
practice of spitting.
The cautionary Notices illustrated in my Annual Report for 1902, approved
by the Sanitary Committee in November of that year, have been extensively
circulated by means of a house-to-house distribution, and requests for additional
copies are constantly received.
The experiment was made in June last of having some of these Notices
printed on metal, and they have been found exceedingly useful for exhibition
in places exposed to the weather where cards quickly deteriorate.
With a view to checking this nuisance amongst children, it was suggested
that the School Board Authorities should instruct their teachers to warn their
pupils of the danger of the practice, and thus check the mischief at its inception.
The idea was a good one, and the School Management Committee of the Board
had already had its attention called to the matter by a private individual.
It appeared to me, however, that a more useful purpose would be served
if the Corporation directed the attention of all governing bodies of schools in
the City to the advisability of their taking active steps in the direction of
checking the evil amongst scholars under their charge. It is unquestionable