[Report 1903] / Medical Officer of Health, Portsmouth Borough.

  • Portsmouth (England). Borough Council.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1903] / Medical Officer of Health, Portsmouth Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have to depend on finding accommodation in the Hospital, but that is not a desirable place to take a family to, and, moreover, there is not always the room to spare. The want of a suitable place is often felt and more especially is it very necessary in cases of Small-pox, when it is always advisable to shut up the whole house for disinfection. Lastly, I may mention that during my inspection of the cows at the dairy, I found a cow apparently suffering from tuberculosis ; this was slaughtered at my suggestion, and the diagnosis being confirmed on post mortem examination, the carcass was seen by a magistrate and destroyed. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your obedient servant, A. MEARNS FRASER, Medical Officer of Health. There were no more cases attributable to this dairv, and the number of cases of scarlet fever in the Borough fell during March and April, after that the disease became fairly prevalent and remained so during the year. The disease, as I have mentioned before, was of a very mild type, which I think in part accounts for its being so prevalent. I believe a number of children who had scarlet fever had it so slightly that it was not recognised, and no precautions being taken to isolate these very mild cases, they were instrumental in spreading the disease, especially in day or Sunday schools. Fortunately the scarlet fever of to-day is very different from the disease of fifty or sixty years ago. In the middle and early part of last century the deaths in cases of scarlet fever reached 20 and 30 per cent., but now the average is not more than four or five per cent., and in this Borough was not one and a half per cent, last year. In connection with scarlet fever, and the large amount of money spent by the Authority on the Milton Hospital, the principal use of which is the isolation of Scarlet Fever patients, I presented the following report in October ;—