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I have before shown that over 1,600 cases of scarlet fever alone
were notified during the year, and that we only dealt with one-tenth
of this number by hospital isolation. When, too, it is remembered that
nearly all the largest employers of labour now require the enforced
idleness of those employes who come from a house containing a case
of infectious disease, that the Police and Postal service have rigid rules
of the same character, and that the Borough is riddled with small
food and milk businesses carried on in cottages where, however possible
isolation may be in theory, the practical dangers of treating the case
at home are innumerable, it is evident that our hospital is now of more
use to the favoured individual than to the community, and that to
serve the purposes of the latter a larger number of beds is imperative.
Your Public Health Committee has now before it the consideration
of this important subject, and I hope the Council will, in its decision,
also recognise the claims of the poorer inhabitants who are attacked
with enteric fever. This is a disease peculiarly fitted for hospital
treatment, provided always the cases are removed in the early stage of
the disease. Although infectious, almost solely by means of the bowel
discharges, and consequently in competent hands comparatively easy to
isolate, the course of the illness is so long and the complications liable
to arise are so many, sudden, and severe, that a working-class
community is probably more handicapped in the treatment of this
disease than of any other infection.
General Sanitary Administration.—In the appendix will
be found a list of nuisances dealt with by the Inspectors during the
year, chiefly under the Public Health Act, 1875. Many of these in
themselves cannot be said to be injurious to health, though they are
sufficiently inimical to comfort to be considered nuisances. Little
difficulty is experienced in dealing with the graver nuisances which
from time to time engage the attention of the sanitary staff, but the
Inspectors have to pay many unnecessary visits in order to secure the
remedying of these minor defects, the several items on the notice
being carried out piecemeal and at odd times. Hitherto it has
been the practice, in addition to the statutory notice, to send one
or more letters of warning to the owner. Looking to the time lost