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22
medical practitioner having the qualifications required for office
of Medical Officer of Health of the district to make such examinations
and give such certificates as aforesaid."
The Medical Officer is here called upon to step outside the
ordinary course of his duty in order that he may decide whether
or no certain owners of property shall be exempted from Assessment
in regard to dwellings comprised in the description provided
for by this section.
The separate dwellings in respect to which certificates were
granted during the year numbered 295.
Sanitary
Department.
Progress has been made in the sanitary work of
Parish and considerable improvement effected.
Your staff of Inspectors has performed the complex
duties devolving upon it with energy and efficiency. The cases
coming daily under notice, although numerous, have received
early attention, and especially in that section of them having
reference to infectious diseases has promptitude been displayed.
Nineteen hundred and seventy-four cases of infectious dieases
have been notified at the office during the year. Except in a
limited number of instances an inspection has been made and
disinfectants supplied on the day of the receipt of notification.
In all cases the drain test has been applied. A large percentage of
the drains thus examined proved defective; some flaw in the
system permitting the escape of sewer gas into the interior of
the house. The older system of drain laying was necessarily
imperfect. Experience had not yet suggested improvements
in principle and method, now universally recognised as essential
to the satisfaction of sanitary requirement. But in the demand
for the introduction of these improvements the Sanitary Inspecto'r
is often met by serious difficulty. Some landlords averse to the
large expenditure a reconstruction entails, whilst observing the
letter of the law, employ every artifice in the defeat of its spirit
and intention. These evasions, in which an experienced hand