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13
near the New Cut. As the statement appears to have produced
some anxiety amongst the inhabitants of St. James's, Westminster,
perhaps you will allow me, through your columns, to
say that only one death from typhus has occurred in Little
Windmill Street, St. James's, since January 1862, and that I
have received information of the existence of nine such cases
which have all recovered. Although in the Berwick Street Division
of St. James's we have the most thickly populated district in
London for its size, having 10,608 persons on 25 acres of ground,
we have had during the last ten years only 109 fatal cases of
typhus and typhoid fever. This is about one death from fever
in 3000 of the population annually. This is below the death
rate of most other parishes in London, and I attribute it to the
active measures sanctioned by the Vestry.
Whenever typhus or typhoid fever breaks out, when it is
possible, the person is immediately removed to the Workhouse or
Fever Hospital, and the Sanitary Inspector is sent with directions
to remove the family if possible, and at all events to have the
rooms cleansed and whitewashed, and other means of disinfection
and purification adopted. I am convinced that the only means of
arresting the progress of these diseases in the present condition
of our population is to attack individual cases, and promptly to
put in action all known agencies for the destruction and prevention
of the spread of the poison which propagates these fevers.
It is the same with scarlet fever and other contagious diseases,
unless the greatest possible precautions are taken for the dilution
and destruction of the poison, it is impossible to arrest their
progress amongst persons predisposed to take the disease.
I am, Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
EDWIN LANKESTER.
As this letter was not inserted, I wrote some
time after a second and shorter letter, but neither