View report page

71
promptly removed to hospital, their bedding, clothing, &c.,
properly disinfected, and re-vaccination urged upon the
inmates of the infected houses.
The authorities of the French Hospital were particularly
active; the institution was closed for 14 days, the visits of
outsiders discontinued, and the in-patients, with the entire
staff, were re-vaccinated.
The probable origin of the outbreak.—It is suspected
that active infection of the disease was being carried out
by a number of foreign restaurant waiters, who probably
imported the disease from Switzerland, where it was
prevalent at this time, and certainly one of the out-patients
at the French Hospital was a waiter belonging to a foreign
servants' club in the neighbourhood of St. Pancras, where
several suspicious cases of illness had occurred during the
previous two months.
2.—Measles.
(Decennial average, 30.4.)
The heaviest fatality from this disease was during the
first quarter of the year, when 47 children died from it. As
measles is a disease, from its prevalence and the mortality
from it, far greater than that of scarlet fever, it should be
reported to the Local Sanitary Authority as a notifiable
disease. Your Board at my suggestion asked the approval
of the Local Government Board for its inclusion amongst
the notifiable infectious diseases, but a reply "Was received
intimating that pending the completion of inquiries which
are now being made the Local Government Board has
deferred further consideration of the resolution for the
present.