London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Lambeth 1887

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Lambeth]

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the adjacent houses were provided with a liberal supply of
disinfecting powder for use in the dust bin. Every medical
man engaged in practice in the parish was made acquainted
by circular with the method of obtaining for his patient an
expeditious removal to the Hospital of the Asylums Hoard.
In order that delay might not result from any error or
misapprehension in notification ; printed certificates, requiring
only the mention of specific particulars, were supplied
with the circular. In the ordinary course, when the rcgulations
are observed, the removal of a patient is accomplished
within the space of one hour from the receipt of notification
by the Chief Sanitary Inspector.
Communication was opened with the teachers of schools,
both public and private, throughout the parish. A
periodic return of absent scholars was secured. A visit was
made to the house of the absentee by the Inspector, and
the removal of many a case, which would otherwise have
remained as a focus of contagion, was accomplished. In
other cases where illness, infectious in character, was ascertained
to exist, the attendance at school of children from
the same family or house was interrupted by the veto of the
teacher, obtained through the intervention of the inspector.
The period of epidemic is the opportunity of the sanitary
reformer. It is an occasion upon which the owner of property
is peculiarly open to the influence of persuasion in
regard to an improvement in the plan, or the efficiency, of
the sanitary appliances of the infected premises. The
opportunity of the moment was seized. The drainage in
a large number of houses was thoroughly re-organized, and
many sanitary improvements of a minor character effected.
In other zymotic diseases disinfection is carried out upon
the same system as that adopted in Scarlet Fever. The
number of infected houses visited by the inspectors reached a