[Report 1898] / Medical Officer of Health, Barnsley County Borough.

  • Barnsley (England : Unitary authority). County Borough Council.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

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

Credit: [Report 1898] / Medical Officer of Health, Barnsley County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Measles was checked, but only through prompt closure of schools. Here again the uncertainty of diagnosis in the first three days of the illness before the rash appears, makes satisfactory isolation impossible, if indeed parents were always willing to have a child isolated, and did not sometimes wish all their remaining children to have it and have done with it. The experiment was somewhat costly (;^i88i) and its results rather discouraging, but it does emphasise the fact that the early closing of schools is the most efficient way of checking an epidemic of Measles. Kendray Hospital.—The Kendray Hospital continues to be managed in a thoroughly efficient way by the matron, Miss Pauline. To her untiring care, and that of the nurses under her, not a few patients owe their lives, and it is only just to mention the unfailing cheerfulness with which the whole nursing staff carry out their duties. The total number of cases admitted to the Hospital during the year was 304, or 4 fewer than in 1897. The reason for this slight falling off being that until the Typhoid Fever epidemic broke out, there had been fewer cases of infectious disease than usual, and when the epidemic came, cases had to be refused, as the Hospital was unduly over- crowded. This over-crowding became a very serious matter in October, and the contributing Authorities were asked whether they would share the cost of erecting temporary biildings. Fortunately the epidemic began to abate, and no teuporary buildings were erected. But the question of ac:ommodation will have to be met in the coming year 1899. Tie increased and increasing popularity of the Hospital as shewn (i) by the increased percentage of cases admitted from bamsley itself, and (2) by the actual increase in the number adnitted from contributing districts (169 in 1898, as against 149in 1897)—will compel either the provision of additional buillings or the limitation of the number'of patients admitted, unleis the over-crowding is to recur, which is inevitable