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implicated. Enquiries were made concerning other absentees, and in
one case bacteriological investigations were carried out, but in every
instance the disease could be excluded. Daily contact was maintained
with the school during the period of quarantine, but no further cases
of the disease occurred.
At the same time, exhaustive investigations were carried out at
the patient's home, specimens of faeces for bacteriological examination
being obtained from all other members of the household. The
domestic water supply was sampled and found to be satisfactory, and
other water supplies in the district, which the child might have consumed,
were sampled and found to be free from contamination. The
milk and other food supplies, were investigated with negative results.
Other contacts in the neighbourhood, including relatives of the patient,
were also visited.
Although there had been no recent similar illness in the child's
family, one member of the household had suffered with the disease
many years previously, and seemed at first likely to prove to be a
carrier, but careful and repeated investigations proved that this was
not the case.
The source of the infection was discovered to be an elderly member
of the household who, although she could not recall having
suffered with the disease, proved to be a carrier of the typhoid
organism, and this was subsequently found to be of the same type
as that affecting the patient. This person had been in particularly close
contact with the child; she was admitted to hospital for treatment,
which successfully eradicated the infection, and no further cases of
the disease occurred.
It will be seen that the amount of work devoted to this one case
was considerable, but when it is considered that a possible epidemic of
typhoid fever was avoided, all the investigations would appear to have
been fully justified.
Whooping Cough.
This is another of those diseases which at least temporarily, and
one hopes, permanently, has lost a great deal of its former virulence.
Of the 205 cases notified, only five had to be treated in hospital.
There was a large drop in the incidence of this disease compared
with the previous year when 316 cases were notified, but, once again,
this is a condition in which one does not expect to get one hundred
per cent notification as it is often so mild that it is either missed
altogether, or else diagnosis is so difficult that a firm decision is never
reached.
There were no deaths in the area from this disease during 1955.