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of children, usually of school age, and in fact about 130 of the
sufferers had been attending school up to the time of the attack.
Every effort was made by co-operation with school-teachers and
visitors, &c., to prevent the disease from spreading, and no
child was allowed to go to school from an infected house. The
existence of the disease was often revealed by the registration of
a death, and it is the fact that the spread of disease was usually
the result of keeping patients at home under circumstances that
rendered nugatory any possible attempts at isolation.
The subjoined histories are deserving of record in illustration
of the necessity of removal when the patients cannot be safely
isolated at home; the trouble in the first group of cases however
arose from an error in diagnosis:—
At a house in Elgin Mews, a hoy aged four years, fell ill towards the end of
September, and a girl aged two, a few days later; they were medically treated
for measles. Their mother falling ill shortly afterwards, another doctor was
called in, who recognised all three cases to be scarlet fever. A third child fell ill
on October 14. The mother recovered; the three children died on the 15th,
18th, and 29th October respectively. Had the first case been correctly diagnosed
and removed to hospital, probably the trouble would have ended with its little
life, supposing that life could not have been saved: as it was, the parents had to
mourn the loss of their entire family. The father stated that if he had known
the nature of the illness in the first cases, he would have had the children
removed to hospital.
A young woman came home at the end of August, to Portobello Road, from
Kentish Town, with a sore throat, having been unwell for some days previously;
with an unrecognised ailment, which no doubt was scarlet fever, for about
twelve days afterwards, her sister, a married woman, fell ill with this disease.
This woman's son, aged 3, was attacked on the following day, and her husband
also a fortnight later. The child died. Recognition and isolation of the first
case would have saved a life and prevented the illness of a married couple.
At South Street, St. Mark's, there were four cases in one house. One of
them, a fatal case (second in order of occurrence), was supposed to be measles,
as by one doctor the first case also was. The occurrence of the third and fourth
cases left no room for doubt as to the nature of the illness. Removal of the
first case would have prevented the other three cases, and by consequence would
have saved the life of one child.
At Ifield Road, scarlet fever appeared in the family of an auxiliary postman in
September. The first and second cases did well, and then three cases in