[Report 1886] / Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire Combined Sanitary District.

  • Berkshire Combined Sanitary District.
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report 1886] / Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire Combined Sanitary District. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Applications for registration under the Act were received, and the applicants names placed on the register after the premises had been inspected. The weekly returns of pauper sickness included 78 cases during the twelve months ; being five fewer than in the previous year. Eleven were children under five years of age. Six only were attacks of zymotic disease (see Table II.) The district as a whole has been very free from serious outbreaks of disease of this class, excepting measles in the late autumn, although from time to time isolated attacks have been notified and dealt with. Small Pox. In March one attack was reported at “ Halfway,’' the patient being a youth, who had been in company with a militiaman living at Hoe Benham, and who had returned there from Reading, where his regiment had been embodied for training, during which time some very light cases of the complaint occurred among the men in his barrack room. A trained nurse was placed in charge. The patient did well, although the attack was a severe one, and the usual precautions being very carefully carried out, there was no spread either at Halfway or at Hoe Benham. Measles. Early in the year there was a certain amount of this complaint in the district and one attack was fatal; but it then disappeared till the end of October, when it appeared at Chievely, and a little later on at North Heath, Winterbourne, Curridge, and Hermitage. In the first instance infection seemed to have been brought from the Urban district. The complaint spread very rapidly, notwithstanding the closing of the element- ary schools, and the adoption of all practicable precautions, and four deaths resulted from it (three being children under 2 years of age), but as is generally the case the epidemic subsided almost as rapidly as it had spread, and it had nearly spent itself by the end of the year. Scarlet Fever. At the beginning of the year it appeared in a school at Speen, but did not spread, and later on a few