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11
The Registration of Contagious Diseases.
Without a Registration of Contagious Diseases, all Sanitary
organization must be very imperfect. At present, Officers of
Health rarely get information of epidemic diseases at their early
stages, 'and (often when it is too late to be of any real service.
In Bristol Mews, for instance, the information of a death from
Small Pox was first known through the Registrar Generals
Returns; upon inspection it was found that a woman with
G children, had 4 of them suffering from Small Pox; next door,
a lad fresh from the country caught it and died, giving it to
3 other children in a house in this mews. Altogether 20 cases
occurred, some of which were removed. This place is a cul-de-sac,
it lies low, surrounded by lofty houses, entered by a covered
archway; there is no current of air; it is closely packed with
horses and dirty people. Thorough inspection has since been
made from house to house, and a number of Sanitary Orders
issued. In the epidemic of Scarlet Fever 3 years ago, many
young children in this mews suffered severely.
I brought the subject of the Registration of Disease, before the
Health Section of the Social Science Congress in 1869,* and as
the present time is again favorable for discussing a question of
so much importance I may be excused for repeating some of the
suggestions, and express the hope that such a Clause will be
inserted in the Public Health Bill now before Parliament as shall
be workable and satifactory to future Officers of Health.
It could be readily shown that the legal registration of
zymotic disease is an essential feature of public health
legislation, and of any sound system of sanitary organization,
and how its operation would benefit the community in checking
contagious maladies. Means that might be employed for
carrying it out, are fully adverted to in the paper.
Curative skill applied to the contagious forms of preventable
diseases has reached its maximum success. Medical services
should now be directed to "prevention, rather than cure."
Especially ought public school teaching, as well as medical
practice, be directed to this end, if medical men are to be
credited with sound doctrine and honest practice. In the last
10 years scarlet fever killed 280,000 children; measles 130,000;
whooping cough 150,000 ; by 4 diseases alone 600,000.
* "How the Government may beneficially interfere to limit the spread of
infectious disease." — Social Science Transactions, 1869.