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65
26 deaths were clue to Diarrhœal diseases. As night be
expected, the number of deaths was lower than in 1911 and higher
than in 1912. Whatever views be held as to the causation of
summer Diarrhoea no doubt exists of the retarding influence of
a wet, cold summer, or of the opposite effect of a hot dry summer.
In the matter of temperature and rainfall the summer of 1913
came somewhere between those of 1911 and 1912. The number
of deaths of infants from Diarrhoeal diseases was as follows :
1911, 68; 1912, 12; 1913, 21. The total deaths from Diarrhoeal
diseases were : 1911, 98; 1912, 17; and 1913, 26.
There have been many inquiries into the subject of Diarrhoea,
some of which, like Dr. Ballard's and Dr. Newsholme's, have dealt
with all the aspects of the subject. Others have concerned themselves
with special aspects of the subject. There was one aspect
of the question which had an especial interest for us last summer.
That Diarrhoea is an infectious disease capable of spreading from
the sick to the healthy is now assumed by a large section of
the medical profession, and if the history of institutions were
faithfully recorded, it would probably be found that it not infrequently
spreads in these. Dr. Sandilands, in a paper before the
Royal Society of Medicine, reviewed the evidence for and against
the communication of Diarrhoea from the sick to the healthy,
and he came to the conclusion that certain fatal forms of summer
Diarrhoea are communicable, but that communicability is by no
means a conspicuous feature of epidemic Diarrhoea in every case.
Laboratory experiments have proved that Diarrhoea is capable
of spreading from the sick to the healthy, but there are very
few instances in which it has been proved that it does so spread
in the epidemics which occur annually throughout the country.
The establishment in which the Diarrhoea occurred consists
really of two houses, but the children and nurses lived entirely
in one, and in the other house the proprietor and his family lived.
The outbreak was confined entirely to the house in which the
infants and nurses lived. The two houses are entirely detached,
although means of communication between the two houses exists
in the rear.