Report on outbreak of enteric fever in West-end of Glasgow and Hillhead, with ; Memorandum on the milk supply of Glasgow in relation to the dissemination of infectious disease by milk / by James B. Russell, M.D., Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow.

  • Russell, James Burn, 1837-1904.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on outbreak of enteric fever in West-end of Glasgow and Hillhead, with ; Memorandum on the milk supply of Glasgow in relation to the dissemination of infectious disease by milk / by James B. Russell, M.D., Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    and the Burgli Sanitary Inspector should meet him that morning for the purpose of consultation. Unfortunately, he was still too ill to engage in business, hut I had the pleasure of meeting those gentlemen, and we proceeded to ins])ect the dairies together. T found Mr. Morrison's to be well-contrived, in admirable order, and in all respects a model of what a dairy should be. There liad been no sickness about it, excepting a severe attack of bronchitis in the latter end of November, without the slightest symptom or suspicion of fever. Of this I am satisfied from the statement so frankly made by the medical attendant. There was at the time of the visit no one ailing in any degree. Messrs. Semple & Wilson's dairy cannot be similarly praised, as a slight description vnW show. From Smith Street you step down into the milk-house, the I'oof of which is low and the aii- decidedly close and heavy. By a door on the left access is obtained through a small apartment, used for business, to the centre of the dwelling-house, and by a door right opposite the street entrance you pass into the washing-house, where a boiler is provided for washing clothes, and another for scalding milk cans, &c., beside it. The doors into this milk-house are scarcely ever shut. Milk was standing about in it in open vessels. Besides the doors, there is in the partition dividing off the washing-house an oblong aperture covered with wire gauze, and almost on a level with the tops of the boilers. The flags are badly jointed and sloppy. The child was still ailing, but the private attendant was said to be less inclined to pronounce it fever. Next morning I again met the Burgh Sanitary Inspector hy appointment on Semple & Wilson's premises. The child had now been certified, and was about to be removed to the Joint Burghs Hospital. I saw it for the first time, and the disease was well- marked enteric fever. It lay in a room used as a sleeping and dining room, in taid out of which dairymaids and others passed freely. However, all risk of infection originating within this dairy was terminated by the removal of the child. From the evidence which had been accumulating in my hands from day to day, derived from house-to-house visitation within my own district, and from the medical gentlemen who were kind enough to answer my circular, regarding both Glasgow and Hillhead, it became apparent that the problem before us was somewhat complicated.
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