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family group occurring in one household. Steps are taken,
wherever possible, to discover the source but it is generally
found in this type of illness that they have recovered before
we have an opportunity of making any investigations and it is
rarely possible to establish the bacterial cause, even by rectal
swabbing, which is invariably carried out where possible. There
has been no outbreak during the year affecting a group such as
a canteen. These isolated attacks of illness of short duration are
probably much more common than these notifications show,
but for the benefit of posterity, who may wonder about this
present-day problem, it should be recorded that the initial
quality of most kinds of fresh meat today is incomparably
inferior to pre-war standards. The essential indigestibility of
much of the meat may well play some part in the frequency of
these digestive disturbances. The type of outbreak occurring
in a canteen, where perhaps twenty or more persons are affected,
is probably in quite a different category and, from time to time,
we are asked to investigate such an outbreak in one of our factory
canteens. Fortunately they have been rare—none during this
particular year—but we have, in the past, been able to bear out
the common experience that "two-stage" cooking of meat is
frequently found to have been practised.
To raise a generation so fastidious that they cannot leave
the W.C. without washing the hands in soap and water should
be our first ambition and the problem of the more especial
care by those engaged in the trade would be greatly simplied.
The future of food hygiene is in the schools, by education side
by side with the provision of facilities for carrying the teaching
into practice. As far as the more especial problem of the food
handlers in the trade are concerned, a hygiene educated, food
fastidious public in normal times would stimulate improved
methods in the trade and also most probably demand more
effective weapons for food control.
Diphtheria. Once again a record was created for this disease,
three cases only occurring during the year, as compared with last
year's record number of five cases. There were no deaths from
this disease during the year.
Scarlet Fever. There were 112 cases of Scarlet Fever as
compared with 137 last year. The disease was, as in recent
years, mild in character. It will be seen that there was one death
from this disease during the year but this is an unusual event.
It was, in fact, in a child of four years of age who developed
acute nephritis in the third week of his illness, from which he
died. He was believed to have had a previous nephritis with
permanent damage to the kidneys.
It is none-the-less a worry to most parents because of the
risk of complications and, while Scarlet Fever generally today
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