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and when the cuticle is beginning to desquamate, the patient should be oiled
from head to feet, and treated with warm soapy baths. It should be borne
in mind that as the desquamating cuticle is the great vehicle of contagion,
the period of desquamation is the period of greatest danger. By such means
thoroughly and conscientiously carried out, the disease would, if not
entirely banished, be rendered a far less frequent visitor. I need hardly say
that few of these precautions can be observed in the houses of the poor; to
them isolation is an idle word, and they possess neither the means, nor in
the majority of cases the intelligence, necessary for the efficient disinfection
of their homes. On the other hand, the rich do not like the restrictions
imposed on them by a strict observance of the foregoing precautions. If,
therefore, the disease is to be dealt with effectually, removal to a suitable
place—at least in those cases where it is evident that isolation cannot be
practised, or the above simple rules carried out, should be enforced by law.
That distressing disease, Hooping Cough, destroyed no less than 89
lives during the year. The greatest mortality from this disease appears to
have existed in the quarter ended Christmas, when 28 deaths were registered,
and the average temperature was 45° F.
From Typhus Fever 12 deaths were registered, of which number 5
occurred in the quarter ended Midsummer, 5 in the quarter ended Michaelmas,
and 2 in the quarter ended Lady-day. No death from this cause was
registered in the Christmas quarter. In October last I received a communication
from the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, drawing my attention
to the fact that relapsing Fever had made its appearance in the metropolis.
The disease affected principally the vagrant and destitute, hence its synonym
"famine fever;” and though itself not of a particularly fatal character,
deserved attention from the fact that those attacked were rendered, in consequence
of the prostration produced by the peculiar character of the disease,