St. Marylebone : report by the Medical Officer of Health on the recent epidemic of typhoid or enteric fever.

  • Whitmore, John.
Date:
[1873]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: St. Marylebone : report by the Medical Officer of Health on the recent epidemic of typhoid or enteric fever. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    From this time until the morning of the 7th of August information of fresh cases of fever was continually brought to my notice by Dr. Murchison and other medical gentlemen, and as on that day the Vestry met, I resolved to inform them of the outbreak. I might have hesitated taking this step from the fear of causing a panic in the district; the responsibility of my position, however, left me no alternative hut to do what the law required. 1 also felt myself called upon to communicate personally with the Medical Officer of the Privy Council, Mr. Simon, in order that in the prosecution of further enquiries I might have the assistance of some gentleman from his department. This I did not seek because I felt personally incompetent to the task, but because it was apparent that the origin of the outbreak was to be sought for in places far away from the Parish of St. Marylebone, beyond which I could exercise no power or authority. Had there been good and sufficient reasons for believing that the cause was to be foimd in the Parish, I should not have applied for any such aid. Mr. Simon, I must state, hesi- tated at first to afford me the assistance I asked for, believing, as he kindly said, I was fully competent to the duty without help, but ultimately he yielded to my wish, and appointed Mr. Vet ten Badclifte to assist in the in- vestigation. On the afternoon of this day (August 7th) I wrote to the Directors of the Company (my letter of the 4th, addressed to their Manager, having failed in its object), calling upon them, in terms as strong as I felt justified in using, to suspend for a time the further sale of their milk, and warning them that, by neglecting to do so, they would be alone responsible for the ill consequences that might thereby ensue. To that letter I received the extraordinary reply which has already been made public, which proposed to the Vestry that the Company would suspend the sale of their milk on condition that the Board would undertake to compensate them for “ the loss and injury they may sustain in loss of profit and reputation.” On Friday, the 8th of August, Mr. Netten Badcliffe entered upon the scene, and, after calling upon myself and Dr. Murchison, and obtaining from us a general outline of the facts as they then existed, I accompanied him to a meeting of the Directors of the Company. At that meeting we met Dr. Corfield and Mr. Chalmers Morton, who, we were informed, had been ap- pointed by the Directors to assist us in the investigation. It was then arranged that all the farms which supplied milk to the Orchard-street Dairy—eight in number—should be visited, and we were assured that the occupiers of those farms had received instructions to afford us every assist- ance and information in their power. It was also arranged that we should meet at Oxford, on Monday, the 11th of August, whence we were to start on our enquiries. It will not be necessary that I should enter into any lengthened detail of the circumstances connected with our inspection of these farms; suffice it to say, that our enquiries were generally directed to the following points: — 1. The system of drainage carried out at the different farms and nature of the soil. 2. The quality and quantity of the water supply.