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6
for treatment. These cases extended, more or less, right
through the year, the following being the number each
month:—
January 5
February 1
March 3
May 1
June 1
July 2
August 2
September 7
October 2
November 22
December 8
The serious outbreak in November was due to an
overlooked case occuring in a large family of children.
From this unfortunate case most of the cases certified
in that month were directly due. This was a most
regrettable incident, which sent up the total number of
cases for the year to a much larger figure than would
otherwise have been the case. If proper care had been
taken with the original case probably at the most the
disease would not have extended to more than two or
three children of the same family instead of implicating
six different households. My experience convinces me
that the greater number of cases of this disease are contracted
in this way. The infection in these cases
appeared to be more virulent than is usually now the
case, and several adults were attacked.
The results of the Milne treatment were again
entirely satisfactory, both in preventing spread of
infection to other inmates of the household and the
avoidance of serious complications in any of the cases.
The cost of treating these cases was £154 15s. 9d.
(including nurse, drugs, instruments and dressings), or an
average per case of £3 8s. 9d. The average time of
each case under treatment was four weeks, 3.3 days.
The cost per case works out at more than the
average for 1912, but this is accounted for to some
extent by the fact that a good many of the patients were
adults and therefore their treatment necessarilly took up
a larger quantity of eucalyptus oil, etc.
These figures show a practical saving to the District
of £423, taking into consideration a detention in
hospital of only three weeks, and four weeks at the
Convalescent Home, a very modest computation in the
light of past experience in these matters.