[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hendon RDC 1904].

  • Hendon (London, England). Rural District Council.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hendon RDC 1904]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/44 (page 12)
    Whooping Cough. Diarrhoea. Phthisis. are most distressing and acute. Moreover, it is one of the commonest causes of chronic Middle Ear disease, a disease which, even after twenty years of discomfort and partial deaf¬ ness, may become acute, and place the patient’s life in jeopardy. The only way to afford a measure of protection to children is to make the disease notifiable. Your predecessors once tried the experiment, but, after nearly 600 notifications had been received, and finding that the plan was futile in checking the spread of infection, T was obliged to advise its dis¬ continuance. Whooping Cough is not notifiable in this District, so that I am unable to say to what extent it has prevailed. From the fact that no death was attributed to it I presume that it did not exist- to any great extent. No death was ascribed to Diarrhoea, and no cases of Epidemic Diarrhoea were reported. The Summer months were moderately hot- and dry, but flies were not over abundant. The milk supply was very care¬ fully watched by your Sanitary Inspector, and the water supply was not likely to conduce to the disease. We have not yet adopted the voluntary notification of Phthisis, but it would be a step in the right direction if we rectified the omission. Sooner or later, as the density of the population increases, we shall be bound to adopt it; and the time will come when the disease will be compulsorily notifiable. Voluntary notification, already in force in many districts, is slowly but surely paving the way for the more drastic measure. Phthisis is an infectious and contagious disease, but, unlike most of the infectious diseases, its infeetivity is very prolonged. It is not a question of weeks or months, but