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19
9. CAUSES OF SICKNESS.
In my previous reports I have told you of the incidence of rheumatism in
Barking, and I have also told you the dangers attending travelling in the overcrowded
carriages of the District Railway.
This year I would particularly call your attention to typhoid. For many years
we have known the Roding is a dirty river ; this year we have reason to know that
its waters have been impregnated with typhoid and people who bathed in it have
contractcd this disease.
I would wish also to speak of measles, because this year fifteen children died
of measles and its complications. It is unfortunate that even now people do not
take measles sufficiently seriously. It cannot be too widely known that you are
prepared to admit to your isolation hospital cases of measles complicated by
broncho-pneumonia.
Late in the year a considerable number of young persons complained of
abdominal pain and vomiting, followed at varying intervals by jaundice.
In the absence of notification I was not able to follow up these cases, which
I believe to have been Vialls Disease.
Although in many eases the symptoms were severe, we know of no case where
there was any real permanent disability.