[Report 1907] / Medical Officer of Health, Warrington County Borough.

  • Warrington (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

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

Credit: [Report 1907] / Medical Officer of Health, Warrington County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    farmer for his loss) all tuberculous cows, whether suffering from diseased udders or not, the best course for us to adopt is to boil all our milk, and to boil it thoroughly. Another fertile but preventable cause of death is DIARRHOEA. As, however, the greater number of the deaths occur among infants, I will deal with the question under Infant Mortality. ZYMOTIC DISEASES (i.e. Smallpox, Typhoid Fever, Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria, Whooping Cough, Measles and Diarrhoea). The zymotic death-rate has fallen from 8*1 in 1906 to 2*1 in 1907, the rate for the previous years from 1896 onwards having been as follows :— 1896. 1897. 1898. 1899. 1900. 1901. 1902. 1903. 1904. 1905. 1906. 3*0 2*8 3*2 3-01 2*5 3*8 1*58 3*5 4*6 2*7 3*1 The two diseases under this heading which require chief notice are Scarlet Fever and Diphtheria. (See Table TIT.) SCARLET FEYER has been especially prevalent, 311 cases having been notified during the year, and 12 of these have been fatal. The disease has therefore not been severe if judged of by its fatality, but this does not take into account the number of sufferers who have recovered but have been left with chronic ear, kidney, and other complications. The chief point of interest in connection with this disease is that hospital isolation, even when practised as thoroughly as has been done in Warrington during past years, has failed to diminish its prevalence (see Table and Chart p. 35). And as a matter of fact the very mildness of the disease is one of the chief causes of its continued prevalence, for a large proportion of the slight cases—cases where perhaps the rash was scarcely visible and only a sore throat complained of—must necessarily escape detection. These cases however are just as infectious as the more severe ones, and bv their unrestricted movements, and perhaps by their attendance at school, etc., they spread infection with great ease.