Sixth annual report of the Council of the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell...

  • Camberwell (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Sixth annual report of the Council of the Metropolitan Borough of Camberwell... Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/55 (page IX)
    London County Council that we should look for assistance in appointing a permanent referee. We will assume that a doubtful case breaks out in a large business establishment where means of isolation are difficult. For the medical attendant to have the patient removed on suspicion will do great harm to the proprietor, and will certainly lead to unpleasant relations between the parties concerned, to say the least, if it should not at the Wharf be considered a case of small-pox. If, on the other hand, the patient be kept at home, and other employes contract small pox, the public health necessarily suffers. The total number of deaths from measles was 79; of these 29 occurred in the two divisions of Camberwell and 26 in Peckham. Last year there were 100 fatal cases of this disease, of which 41 came from Peckham. At first there was but little improvement in the delay in notification of this disease that we have experienced in previous years. On receiving information from a school as to the existence of this disease in a given house, the inspector learns at his visit that the child has recovered or in other cases there is a denial on the part of the parent that any illness whatever exists in the house. Towards the end of the year there was an improvement in both these conditions, i.e., earlier and more accurate information. As I have previously pointed out, the punitive clauses of the public health are practically inoperative owing to the lack of provision for notification, and all parents have to do to avoid any interference on the part of the authority is to assert that the children have not suffered from the disease. In the early part of the year I reported an instance to your Committee where the people refused either to allow us to disinfect and on the other hand equally to send us a certificate stating that they had disinfected to our satisfaction. As we had no evidence beyond that of the hearsay description that there had been measles in the house, the Committee decided that no action could be taken. At the same time the fact of our insisting on disinfection and yet at the same time being unable to enforce it is an anomalous state of things which can only be properly dealt with by the term applied in altogether different circumstances, namely, ending or mending. Up to the present year the Public Health Committee