London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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St James's 1870

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for St James's, Westminster]

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54
Water Companies to give a constant instead of an
intermittent supply, This would at once get rid of
the base and disastrous system of storing the water
in cisterns and butts, and remove a fruitful source
of disease and death, and destruction of property.
Food of various kinds can be the means of
conveying the germs of Zymotic Disease. Thus
recently in Islington it was shown by Dr. Ballard
that Typhoid Fever was conveyed to various families
by means of milk supplied from a dairy where the
milk pails had been washed in water from a well
that communicated with the drains of a house
where Typhoid Fever prevailed.
In another recent instance a whole district of a
town supplied with milk from a farm house was
infected with Scarlet Fever On enquiry it was
found that Scarlet Fever prevailed at the farm from
which the milk came, and that several persons had
milked the cows before they had got well of Scarlet
Fever. Bread and other kinds of food handed by
sick persons, or persons in attendance on them,
have been taken by others, and the disease has thus
been reproduced. This is especially the case with
Cholera and Typhoid Fever, but is more or less
true of all other Zymotic Diseases. The fact is,
persons not ill should not eat in the rooms where
Zymotic Diseases exist, and the food that has been
handled or tasted and not required by the sick
should be at once destroyed.
If the germ-poisons can be thus easily conveyed
by air, water, or food, they can be much more