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only two deaths being recorded due to it . . . "Considerable difficulties
were met with in dealing with this outbreak owing to the fact
that the district is at present without any provision for isolating patients
suffering from such diseases or for efficiently disinfecting their clothing."
The Infectious Diseases Notification Act was adopted in this district.
For the year 1891, the Medical Officer of Health reported " The action of
the Board in a recent case where I reported the existence of water closets
without a water supply will, if continued, soon remove a virtual source
of disease . . . ." "Many householders are careless as to the cleanliness
and situation of their drinking water cisterns. All such cisterns should
be covered so as to prevent contamination by birds, mice, etc." The
Medical Officer of Health, reporting in 1892, returned to the subject of
defective drains. "No amount of ventilation of the main sewers will
prevent sewer gas being drawn into houses that communicate directly
with the drains."
These extracts from the reports for the later years of the last century
of the Medical Officers of Health of Harrow-on-the-Hill are given as
reminders that the activities of the Health Authorities up to the turn of
the century were largely in relation to environmental hygiene. Even in
a district which for many years, because of its favourable vital statistics,
was claimed to be the healthiest in Middlesex, there was a great need
up to the end of the century for improvements in the many aspects of
environmental hygiene. The extracts show the attention being given
during those years in this district, as of course would have been the case
in other areas throughout the country, to such matters as the provision of
a sufficient and safe water supply, the disposal of sewage, the improvement
in drainage and in sewerage, improved highways, protection of food
supplies, better housing, freedom from nuisances and various measures
to prevent and limit the spread of infection. Although up to the middle
of the century, the general sanitary state, particularly of towns of any size,
was of a low standard, by the turn of the century matters had so improved
that it could be claimed that by then environmental hygiene had been
put on a firm basis, the benefits from which were to be seen in the improved
general health of the community reflected in the better vital
statistics and by the virtual disappearance of the more spectacular
outbreaks of such epidemic diseases as cholera, small pox and typhoid
fever.
Local Authorities played their part in this improvement. Admittedly
it would not be claimed that this vast improvement was the result only
of their endeavours ; on the contrary, it will be accepted that the energies
of the local authorities were but part of the surge which was reflected
in such various ways as the activities of voluntary bodies concerned
with such varied matters as the provision of housing, cleansing of the
poor, etc. ; by the writings of such as Dickens, or the individual efforts of
those like Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale. To the extent,
however, that the improvement in health was the result of the activities
of local authorities, this was from the energies of the local sanitary
authorities—to-day's county districts. For the greater part of the time
there were, of course, no other authorities who could have been looked to
to shoulder the burdens, as it was not until the 1888 Local Government
Act that county councils and county borough councils were created.