View report page

81
Medical men, clergymen, and others are earnestly requested to
give immediate information of cases of infectious disease to the
Sanitary Department, at the Board's Offices, No. 197, High
Holborn, W.C.
All inquiries and complaints as to drains, sewers, nuisances,
removal of dust, &c., should be made at the offices of the Board,
between the hours of 9.30 and 5.30.
By order of the Board,
HENRY C. JONES,
September, 1892. Clerk to the Board.
The following circulars were issued by the Local Government
Board.—
PRECAUTIONS AGAINST THE INFECTION OF
CHOLERA.
1. The Order of the Local Government Board, of 28th August,
1890, now in force, gives certain special powers to Port and Riparian
Sanitary Authorities, enabling them to deal with any cases of
cholera brought into their districts, so as to prevent as far as
possible the spread of the disease into the country. But it is to be
remembered that cases of choleraic infection differ widely in severity,
and that persons suffering only slightly from the disease, or incubating
it, are likely to be landed at English sea-board and riparian
towns, and to make their way to inland places. This has, in fact,
occurred in former epidemics.
2. Former experience of cholera in England justifies a belief that
the presence of imported cases of the disease at various spots in the
country will not be capable of causing much injury to the population,
if the places receiving the infection have had the advantage of proper
sanitary administration ; and, in order that all local populations may
make their self-defence as effective as they can, it will be well for
them to have regard to the present state of knowledge concerning
the mode in which epidemics of cholera (at least in this country; are
produced.
3. Cholera in England shows itself so little contagious, in the sense
in which small-pox and scarlatina are commonly called contagious,
that, if reasonable care be taken where it is present, there is almost
no risk that the disease will spread to persons who nurse and otherwise
closely attend upon the sick. But cholera has a certain
peculiar infectiveness of its own, which, where local conditions assist,
can operate with terrible force, and at considerable distances from
the sick. It is characteristic of cholera (and as much so of the slight
cases where diarrhoea is the only symptom as of the disease in its
G