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Pneumonia:- Pneumonia patients were mainly admitted when the
illness was super-imposed on some other serious and longstanding
disability. Such disabilities were as follows:Pulmonary
emphysema, 29 cases; chronic bronchitis 26; heart
disease 25; pulmonary fibrosis 5; severe senile kyphosis 3; and
bronchiectasis 1; healed tuberculosis 1. Other associated
conditions were:- lobar collapse 7 patients; pleural effusion 2
patients and one patient each suffering from anaemia, asthma and
nervous depression. 64 out of the 71 admissions were in the
months January, February, March, November and December. 12 of
the total had a preceding influenzal type illness. The ages of
pneumonia patients admitted were:- under 15, 3 cases; 15 - 50,
6; 50 - 70, 38; and over 70, 24. There were 10 pneumonia deaths
and a further pneumonia patient died suddenly from coronary
thrombosis.
Dysentery:- All cases admitted were of the Sonne type. In a
disease seldom dangerous to life and, in a large proportion of
cases, lasting only a few days, the convalescent carrier is one
of its principal problems. There appears to be a growing number
of drug resistent strains, suggesting that such resistence can
be readily developed. A few random drug sensitivity tests gave
the following results:-
(a) drugs to which the dysentery bacillus was resistent:sulphonamides,
4 cases; tetracycline, 2 cases; streptomycin, one
case.
(b) drugs to which the dysentery bacillus was sensitive:streptomycin,
5 cases; neomycin and chloramphenicol, 4 cases
each; tetracycline 3 cases; sulphonamides, 2 cases. Even where
drug sensitivity has been demonstrated in vitro, it does not
seem to follow that treatment with that drug will necessarily
terminate the carrier state. Fortunately, though the value of
drugs in the carrier state is uncertain, the great majority of
patients become free from infection in the course of a few
weeks and only four of the 48 patients admitted had to be discharged
from hospital without securing three consecutive negative
stool cultures.
Chicken-pox:- As usual, the majority of chicken-pox patients
were admitted because of isolation difficulties. The only complications
encountered were one case each of meningo-encephalitis,
pneumonia and secondary lymphadenitis.