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ding which have been used by persons suffering from small-pox, are sometimes
sent to be washed in the same court where the disease was prevailing, or to a
neighbouring court, without such clothes having been previously disinfected;
although, by the 38th section of the Sanitary Act, the sending away, without
proper precaution, of infected clothes or bedding, renders persons so doing
liable to a penalty; but nevertheless clothes, &c., are repeatedly so sent to be
washed, the majority of the poor people being ignorant of the law. Many
persons having small-pox are often seen walking in the streets.
It is to be hoped that some useful lessons will be learnt from this severe
epidemic of small-pox, so that more preparation may be made to combat the
disease on the occasion of another epidemic, and that the admission of patients
to the Asylum Board Hospitals will not be attended with the same unwise
restriction which has prevailed at the Homerton Hospital; whereby some
patients who were sent from the Whitechapel Union Workhouse were refused
admission into that Hospital, because the Medical Officer of the Union
Workhouse had not sent with the patients the particulars of the cases,
according to a prescribed form kept only at the Hospital. These patients,
on their return to the Workhouse, having been provided with a form by
the hospital authorities were immediately sent back to the Hospital, with the
form duly filled up, when they were admitted. This piece of red-tapism unnecessarily
inflicted a double journey upon these unfortunate patients. It is
most desirable that better regulations should be formed in these hospitals for
the admission of patients than have hitherto prevailed, and that the anxiety of
the friends of patients should be appeased to the utmost, by affording speedy information
to them respecting the dangerous condition or death of the patients.
If a new act for the prevention of the spreading of epidemic diseases
be passed during this session, among other things it should enact, that whenever
a case of small-pox, scarlet fever, fever, or cholera, should occur in any
house, whether such house be occupied by a poor or a rich person, information
of the same should be sent to the Medical Officer of Health of the District.
On perusing the table of mortality from epidemic diseases, it will bo
seen that the deaths from small-pox in this district, for the quarter, have
been 83, to which there must be added the 12 deaths which have occurred in
the Small-Pox Hospitals of persons who had been removed thereto from this
district; thus making the deaths from this disease 95, or 14.2 per cent. of the
total mortality, which is at the annual rate of 5.0 per 1000 of the entire
population.
Large as is the mortality in this district from small-pox, it is very small
as compared with the mortality at Rotterdam and the Hague during the same
period. The population of Rotterdam is 121,017, and the deaths from
small-pox have been 985, which is a mortality at the annual rate of 31.7
per 1000 of the population ; and in the Hague, which has a population of
92,021, the deaths from Small-pox have been 952, or a mortality at the
annual rate of 41.2 per 1000. In both these cities vaccination is much