[Report 1913] / Medical Officer of Health, Basingstoke Borough.
- Basingstoke (England). Borough Council.
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: [Report 1913] / Medical Officer of Health, Basingstoke Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.
25/50 (page 3)
![There is a very considerable number of people whose work lies in the Borough of Basingstoke, but who live in the surrounding district. I shall refer to this later in the report upon Housing. Reviewing the year 1913, nothing very noteworthy or of great inmportance occurred. The health of the Rural District has been exceptionally good. There was a mild but widespread epidemic of measles occurring among school children, spreading wave-like over the District, and necessitating the closure, for short jjeriods, of a large number of schools. This continued from February until July, and was ended by the summer holidays. The weather of 1913 was remarkably good, the summer warm, but not particularly dry, and the year generally would be described as a very healthy one. There was no epidemic of notifiable diseases, but a few isolated cases of scarlet fever and diphtheria arose in different parts of the Rural District. The most noteworthy fact brought out by the statistics was the peculiarly low Infan- tile Mortality rate, i.e., 47-43, which is nearly half what it ever has been before. It has been pointed out that the Infantile klortality depends upon the invariable accompaniments of poverty, bad food, lack of medical attention or nursing, absence of suitable milk supply, uncleanliness, ovei'crowding, bad housing and the lilce, or the reverse. I think that the deatli of only 12 infants in a po]>ulation of 12,460 is a fact that speaks for itself.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28907334_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
