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9
FOURTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT
OF THE
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH.
TO THE BOARD OF WORKS, FULHAM DISTRICT.
Gentlemen,
Another year has passed away, and it is my duty to lay before
you a resume of the sanitary condition of our District, since my last
Annual Report. It is in these yearly documents, too little read and far
too much disregarded by the public, that they have laid before them
the danger or security they have experienced. It is in them that they
are told what has been done to mitigate or avert the perils of epidemic
sickness, and what is necessary to be accomplished in order to reap the
full benefit of Sanitary Science. It is in them they see the result of the
almost silent working of our Hygienic system, and how they have more
or less shared the good arising out of Sanitary Laws, here so unobtrusively
carried out, as to escape even the semblance of complaint or
of oppression. Now and then a tale of trouble is told, an outbreak of
Scarlet Fever comes only to be nipped as it were in the bud; it finds
no resting place as hitherto amongst us. Small Pox too by isolation
and prompt removal of early cases to the Hospital takes no stronghold.
The Zymotic diseases incidental to childhood, certainly have lost much
of their intensity and fatality through sanitary regime, whilst the more
malignant Epidemic, Cholera, we know can be satisfactorily checked and
kept in abeyance. Who then can murmur at the insignificant cost of
carrying out protective laws so full of good? It may indeed be said,
that no large communities can now exist without a special Board of
Health, as one of their necessities. In 1861, the population of London
was 2,803,989, of which the western districts contained 463,388. In
the middle of June, 1869, London was computed, by the Registrar
General, to contain not less than 3,170,754 inhabitants, and of these, I
have no doubt the western districts still contained their due proportion,
in fact from the marvellous increase in building operations around us
during the last decennial period it is more than likely that the proportion
had considerably increased. The Registrar General indeed computes
the number for the middle of the present year at 540,647 in the western
group. In my last report I gave a summary of the principal drainage
works, which had been carried out by your Board, for the Sanitary
improvement of the District. During the last year little has been done
in this direction, for, it may be said, our present requirements are all
but satisfied. The drainage of St, Peter's Square, Ravenscourt Park