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[No. 13.
REPORT
ON THE
HEALTH OF PADDINGTON
DURING THE HALF-YEAR ENDING
LADY-DAY, 1866,
BY J. BURDON SANDERSON, M.D.,
Medical Officer of Health.
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE VESTRY.
Population of Paddington, April, 1861 75,807.
Vestry Hall; May, 1865.
During the six months terminating April 1st, the mortality of London was
exceedingly high: 6.6 per thousand of the population died during the quarter
ending December 31, and 7.0 per thousand during the quarter following.
Paddington did not participate in this unhealthiness, for the corresponding rates
for the same quarters were respectively 4.7 and 4.9. In the metropolis generally,
the relative numbers expressing the mortality from fever alone in the two quarters
were severally 36 and 31: in Paddington they were 17 and 5.
The Epidemics in Russia and North Germany.—It is now a month since
the public mind was agitated by the news that the "Siberian Pest" had broken
out on the banks of the Neva and was steadily making its way to this country,
and that a new and hitherto unheard of malady had appeared on the Southern
shores of the Baltic. The first of these rumours was soon known to be groundless,
for even the imperfect descriptions which first reached us, were sufficiently
complete to enable those who were well acquainted with diseases of this
nature to recognize that even in its most severe form the plague of St. Petersburg
was essentially the same as the contagious fever which has existed in
London during the last three years, and that its tendency to relapse and all its
other frightful characteristics had been in former times observed in Great Britain
—more particularly during the epidemic which prevailed among the half-fed
rural population of Ireland in 1847, when the failure of the potato crop produced
famine, and famine, pestilence.
The popular fear lest the Russian fever should reach England was strengthened
by the report that the disease had already spread to Dantzic and other
places on the Baltic. To this it was added that in its migration to Germany
it had assumed, in addition to the contagiousness of plague, the horrible characteristics
of tetanus-a disease hitherto scarcely known, excepting as an
occasional consequence of certain surgical injuries, or as the effect of poisoning
by strychnia.
To observe and describe the new disease in the district in which it was most
fatal, and to report on the means most proper to be taken for preventing its
communication to this country, I was instructed to proceed to Germany at a few
hours notice. The main results of my journey, may be shortly stated as
follows:—
Epidemic Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis is a disease practically unknown to the
medical profession in this country, and has therefore no English name. In
Germany it was also unknown until two years ago, since which time it has been
met with in that country in various places at great distances from each other.
It has received there a name which describes its most striking, (though perhaps
not its most important) symptom—Genickkrampf. The following are its main
features.—The patient is suddenly seized with shivering, dreadful head-ache and
vomiting; these having continued a few hours, the head is drawn back by
muscular contraction, and the sufferer becomes violently delirious—uttering in
his wanderings cries of pain. In a day or two the delirium subsides, and the