View report page

18
became infected through the medium of his daughter, who was a
servant employed in a house where a case had recently occurred ;
another probably contracted the disease by visiting a house from
where a case had been removed 21 days previously, and the third
from a previous case in the same house, removed a fortnight before.
In every case the strictest measures were taken against the spread
of the disease. All the cases were removed to the Small-pox Hospital
at South Minims, on the same day as the notification was received,
and the vacated rooms immediately fumigated and closed up for 48
hours, after which all the bedding, clothing, hangings, etc., which
were worth keeping were taken away with all due precaution and
disinfected in the steam disinfector attached to the Council's
Isolation Hospital. Worthless articles were removed and burnt, and
the whole premises thoroughly disinfected and cleansed. All " contacts
" had the clothes they were wearing disinfected, and, excepting
those who had been recently done, were re-vaccinated before leaving
the premises, and were visited and kept under observation for three
weeks. In those cases in which visitors had come from other districts
the names and addresses were taken, and the Sanitary Authorities of
the district to which they returned were notified of the facts, so that
these contacts could be kept under observation.
It is a significant fact that of these 8 cases, 7, varying in age
from 20 to 42, had never been re-vaccinated, and in the remaining
case, a child of 4, who had been thoroughly exposed to infection from
a previous case in the house, the disease was extremely mild, due
doubtless to the fact that she had been vaccinated in infancy, 4 years
previously, and it is safe to assume that if she had been re-vaccinated
when the previous case occurred, she would have escaped altogether.
This was not done as, at the time, it was not considered necessary.
SCARLET FEVER.
There were 62 cases notified from 43 houses as against 57 in the
preceding year, and 50 in 1900. They were notified from the different
localities as follows:—11 from Southgate, 25 from New Southgate,
6 from Winchmore Hill, and 20 from Palmers Green and
Bowes.
In G houses sanitary defects were found. Four cases were
imported, and 19 were secondary cases occurring in houses from
which previous cases had been notified.