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The last case was a young married woman in Alperton.
She also was removed to the Hospital Cottage, and everything
in her house that could not be properly disinfected or sterilised
was burnt. Her little baby was also sent in, but died, not of
small pox, but with diarrhoea and vomiting. The Doctor's
certificate stating the death to be due to gastro enteritis.
All these cases were found either to be without vaccination
marks, or only such as had become so faint as to be valueless or
unprotective.
Viewed as a whole the District is to be congratulated on
the few cases, for many were unprotected by vaccination or
re-vaccination at the commencement of the epidemic. By May,
however, 550 were vaccinated by the Public Vaccinator, and,
probably double that number were done privately by their own
doctors. All my remarks of last year on vaccination were
included in the County Medical Officer's Annual Report, so
that I need say little of vaccination again, except to refer to
the fact that though the operation was severe in a number of
cases, no permanent ill-effect ensued, and only in two cases,
have I heard of a thickening of the scars, which will require a
slight operation for their removal.
You were good enough to acknowledge the timely help of
Dr. Mitchel Henderson in attending at the Isolation Hospital,
and also your foreman, Mr. Coney, who did yeoman service
during the epidemic, in leaving his home and fitting up the
Cottages, and in numberless ways assisting the staff and patients
at the Hospital.
I would like here to state that you probably greatly lessened
the epidemic, and really minimised the expense by giving your
Sanitary Officers full power to act as soon as a case occurred,
and by promptly allowing all expenses necessarily connected
with the Hospital, isolation, disinfection of the patients and
their relatives, while any less expeditious course would have led
11s into a big epidemic, and possibly into legal difficulties.