[Report 1896] / Medical Officer of Health, Godstone R.D.C.

  • Godstone (Surrey, England). Rural District Council.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1896] / Medical Officer of Health, Godstone R.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Grinstead Unions, whose percentages are 20'6 and 20-1 re- spectively. One death was registered as due to Measles, that of an Measles. infant aged seventeen months, which was complicated with Pneumonia, and ultimately died in convulsions. This case occurred at Caterham, but not being one of those diseases specified in the Infectious Diseases Notification Act, 1889, it was not brought to my notice except by means of the Registrar’s certificate of death. Although cases occurred in other parts of the district, in no instance did it assume epidemic form. One death was registered as due to Scarlatina at Caterham. Scarlatina. This disease occurred in epidemic form at Blechingley, thirty-four cases having been notified in that locality, where also the one that proved fatal probably contracted it, although living at Caterham. Cases occurred also in Lingfield and Godstone, amounting to sixty-three for the whole district, but of an exceed- ingly mild type, being scarcely recognised in some instances, until the existence of one suffering from a marked eruption led to a doctor being consulted, and thereby revealed the presence of others in the same family in different stages of the disease. Three deaths were registered as due to Diphtheria, which, Diphtheria. as in previous years, ranked next to Scarlatina in prevalence. Nineteen cases were notified as occurring in seven localities, but in no case did it assume epidemic form. Lingfield had the greatest number, and in the same part of the parish in which it was very prevalent three years ago. In one instance only was the presence of th'e true diphtheria baccillus ascertained by bacteriological examination of material obtained from the affected throat. The arrangements which had been made by the Medical Department of the Local Government Board, with reference to the examination of material from the throats of doubtful cases of diphtheria, on behalf of Medical Officers of Health, and to which allusion was made in my report of last year, have, I regret to say, been since abandoned, in consequence of their not having