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10
It is much to be regretted that we could not obtain any
knowledge of the occurrence of Small Pox cases except through
the Relieving Officers, the books of the Poor Law Medical
Officers, and the returns of deaths. I have just stated that 241
deaths occurred at the houses of the patients, now allowing the
death-rate of all the attacks to have been one in every six, we
should have 1446 cases in private houses, whilst we only
obtained information respecting its occurrence in 829 houses,
which were but few more than the number treated in public
practice, so that above 1200 cases were unknown to us and
treated by private practitioners. The number of cases coming
under our notice in each month was as follows: 1870—October,
5; November, 10; December, 27; 1871—January, 92; February,
104; March, 118; April, 126; May, 127; June, 97; July,
49; August, 17; September, 24; October, 22; November, 22,
and December, 13; making a total from the begining of the
epidemic of 856 cases.
There is one rather important matter for consideration, viz.,
whether or not the Small Pox Hospital at Homerton has acted
in any as a focus of disease to the district. 1 believe that a
careful examination of the following facts will show that it has.
At the end of the report there will be found a list of streets and
places examined for Sanitary purposes, with the number of
houses, families and inhabitants in each, also the number of
cases of epidemic diseases which came to our knowledge. Deselecting
first the streets immediately around the Hospital
and ascertaining the number of Small Pox cases which occurred
amongst the inhabitants, we find that there were no less than
110 cases amongst 1492 inhabitants residing in 243 houses,
whilst there were only 703 cases in 36,177 inhabitants residing
in 6,124 houses, which were all the houses inspected. In the