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18
man and wife and 2 or more children, 300 cubic-feet
for each person would be the maximum space that they
live in. In some of these single rooms dangerous
overcrowding exists.
Inspector Biorn has found as many as 7 or 8 individuals
of the same family in one room, but rarely, if
at all, immoral overcrowding existed, or has been
reported to me.
Medical Officers of Health are content with an
average of 300 cubic feet space, because our public
boards could not at present carry through the enforcement
of a law requiring more air space for dwellings,
but all their inquiries into death-rates, show that the
unwholesome state of the abodes of the poor leads to
a large development of diseases under the heads of
mal-nutrition, convulsions, tubercular meningitis, atrophy
and debility in young persons, and this defective
brain-nutrition in after-life, sooner or later brings about
habits of crime and pauperism.
Pauper Cases under treatment during the year.
The register of cases treated during the year by
Dr. Lyle and Dr. Hibberd is inspected weekly, with a
view of ascertaining the seat of Zymotic diseases that
may have occurred in the two districts assigned to
each of the Poor-Law Surgeons.
The name, age, and residence of cases under the
headings of Measles, Scarlet Fever, Whooping Cough,
Fevers, Erysipelas, Diarrhoea, Bronchitis, Malaria,
Rheumatic Fever, Phthisis, &c., are noted, and if