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latter may be satisfactory to the smoke test in the negative sense,
insomuch as there is no escape of smoke through the ground, yet,
when surcharged and under pressure considerable leakage and ground
pollution must take place.
Ground pollution from leaky drains must also be considered,
because,although many of the older houses in this neighbourhood have
within the last few years had the drains reconstructed, the effects of
the defective drains did not disappear with the provision of the new
drains. The vast amount of liquid faecal and other matter which had
sunk into the ground is still a source of mischief.
4. The conditions under this heading are present more or less
in other streets where fatal Diarrhœa is absent.
5. The enquiries shewed especially in the older houses the utter
lack of any suitable provision for food storage. In many instances
the space under the stairs is boarded in and used for this purpose, the
presence of a gas meter in the same part being detected by the smell.
In other instances the only provision for food storage is by old boxes
attached by the tenants to the walls of the kitchen or scullery.
0. These conditions are also present equally in other streets not
affected.
7. Illegitimacy is of account chiefly because the child, through
the mother's circumstances, is often placed under the care of persons
not interested in them by the close ties of affection, which alone are
likely to bring forth the constant attention and care so necessary to
their well being, and the hand fed numbers are thereby increased by
14, or 17 per cent. of the whole deaths.
Whilst making every possible allowance for the causes enumerated
in paragraphs, Nos. 4, 5 and 6, and referred to in my report for the
year 1904, they are only contributary causes, and accepting the conclusions
of the late Dr. Ballard in his report ("embodying the
experiments and investigations covering a period of several years on
the causation of Diarrhœa) it is due to an organism which lives and
propogates in superficial layers of earth contaminated with organic
matter, and arrives at its most active development when the soil has
become thoroughly heated to a considerable depth and thence finds
its way into milk and other organic foods in which it gives rise to an
intense chemical poison productive of Diarrhcea in susceptible consumers
of such foods.
The principal causes must therefore be looked for in Nos. 1, 2 and
3, viz., the meteorological and geological conditions, and bearing in
mind that the sites of these houses are low lying, flat and water
logged with a damp subsoil and were, before being built upon, market
gardens and allotments, the essential factor for the production of
Epidemic Diarrhœa, viz., a sustained high temperature of the air