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6
they were not suffering from Small Pox, I had a letter from
the Superintendent of the Hospital Ships stating the mother was
not suffering from this disease but from an ill-defined form of
fever. The next case was that of a child two years of age residing
at No. 6, North Square, the doctor who notified the case asked
me to visit the patient to confirm his diagnosis, although this is
no part of my duty, I did so and found it to be a very bad case
of confluent Small Pox. I found there were in this small house
eleven children and four adults, the case was at once removed
to the Hospital and the premises thoroughly disinfected, I may
mention the fact that this child was unvaccinated. Another case
occurred in the same house five weeks later also a child, on
again visiting the premises I found the patient was too ill to be
removed, and so it had to be treated at home; a few days after
this an adult lodger in the same house was attacked she was at
once removed to the Hospital, there could be no doubt as to
the source of infection of these last two cases seeing the mother
of these children had been allowed to visit the Hospital Ship
seven times in five weeks.
The next case occurred at a hairdresser's establishment in
Grove Road, on visiting the house I advised the patient's
removal as isolation could not be carried out, whereupon the
husband of the patient called a second doctor in to see the case
and he stated the case was not one of Small Pox; I was
requested to see the case which I did and confirmed the second
doctor's opinion.
On August 22 three cases were reported from Gray Street,
these cases were treated at their homes and no other case
occurred in the neighbourhood. The last notification during the
year was at Walden Street, the medical man attending asked me
to see the case and I found it was one of Chicken Pox.
The fact that a number of cases notified to me as Small
Pox have turned out to be Varicella indicates that Small Pox is
much less prevalent than it was a few years ago, as there are
many medical men of the present day who have scarcely seen
a case of Variola.
SCARLET FEVER.
The number of Scarlet Fever cases notified to me during the
past twelve months were far in excess of any year since the
Notification Act came into force, in fact we have had an
epidemic of this disease in our district, which epidemic has been
common to the whole of the Metropolis; it will be seen that
the highest number of cases of this disease occurring in our
district at a particular time was in August and September ; I
attribute the spread of this disease all over the Hamlet to the fact
that it was of such a mild type that in many cases no notice was
taken of it until the children commenced to peel, and then it was