Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St. Olave]
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" Hospital accommodation should be provided especially for those
patients who cannot be properly isolated at home.
" The rooms and infected articles could then be disinfected and
further spread of the disease arrested.
"I may remind you that in this District there were last year 19
deaths of parishioners from measles, but only two from scarlet fever,
both of which took place in outlying Institutions."
Whooping- Cough also is not notified. It caused seven
deaths, the same number as last vear. In London there were
1 ,483 deaths from this disease, corresponding to a rate of
0.34 per 1,000 living. This is the lowest rate on record, the
nearest approach to so low a rate having been 0.41 in 1883,
after an epidemic in the previous year when the rate was as
high as T21 per 1,000 of the population.
Disinfection is carried out when practicable in those cases
that come to our knowledge.
Diarrhcea was the cause of eight deaths, six of them being
children under one year of age ; the other two were also
young children. There were also 10 deaths due to gastroenteritis,
nine of them being young children, and eight under
one year of age. In London diarrhoea was the cause of 3,600
deaths, or a rate of 0 0.83 per 1,000 living. This rate was 0.15
per 1,000 above the average of the preceding ten years, and
was higher than in any year since 1887. There were also
1,487 deaths from enteritis. 2,655 or 74 per cent, of the
3,600 deaths from diarrhoea took place in the third quarter
of the year—the summer quarter. The great majority of
these are hand-fed children under one year of age, living in
insanitary dwellings on a polluted soil, which reaches the
requisite temperature during the hot summer months. It has
been proved, experimentally, that there is always a sudden