Mr. W.H. Power's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of diphtheria in the Hendon ward of the Hendon urban sanitary district / [W.H. Power].

  • Power, William Henry, Sir, 1842-1916.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. W.H. Power's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of diphtheria in the Hendon ward of the Hendon urban sanitary district / [W.H. Power]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    OFFICIAL COPY. Mr. W. H. Power’s Report to the Local Government Board on an Outbreak of Diphtheria in the Hendon Ward of the Hendon Urban Sanitary District. _ E. Thorne Thorne, For the Medical Officer, April 5, 1883. The outbreak in question occurred in January of this year. On the 5th of the month 14 cases of diphtheria came simultaneously under the notice of Dr. Cameron, the Medical Officer of Health; most of them occurring in his private practice. The 14 patients were in six houses (one of them being Dr. Cameron’s own residence), dispersed over Hendon village. Up to the 5th of January no case of diphtheria, with the single exception of a nurse in Dr. Cameron’s family attacked a day or two earlier, had been heard of in the place for several weeks. Upon this evidence Dr. Cameron, as Health Officer, at once set to work to discover a common cause of the diphtheria. First, he gave attention to the sanitary circumstances of the houses invaded, and, in view of the known defects of the public sewerage of Hendon, he inquired especially as to their drainage circumstances, but without finding in this direction any satisfactory explanation of their attack. These houses, which were without exception better class houses, many of them standing in their own grounds, did not for the most part drain to the public sewers. Generally they were in their sanitary circumstances well appointed and well cared for, and in regard of several very special pains had been taken, and at considerable cost, to render them, as the term is, sanitarily perfect. In a word, the chief of them were houses that might be regarded as protected, either naturally or specially, against public sewer or private drain influence. Very soon, however, in the course of his inquiry, Dr. Cameron got a suspicion that infection of diphtheria might have been conveyed to the invaded houses in milk, and in the end he learned that every one of the families then known to him as recently attacked had obtained their milk supply from a particular source. Further, he ascertained that certain other houses escaping diphtheria, and not easily to be differentiated as regards physical and sanitary circum¬ stances from houses that were invaded, did differ from these houses in the single circumstance of milk service. Hereupon Dr. Cameron examined a sample of milk from the particular dairy that came in question, and a sample also of the pond water there used for farm and dairy purposes. The former he could find no fault with analytically, but the latter he discovered to be fouled to a large extent by sewage matter, and to contain in abundance animalculse that were visible to the naked eye. Notice was forthwith given (6th January) to the dairy farmer of the result of this water analysis, and he was cautioned against further distribution of this milk until his cows, after examination by a competent authority, had been certified to be in good health, and until he had procured for his cows and for dairy purposes a proper supply of water. Upon commencing, 24th January, my inquiry at Hendon I learned that there had been diphtheria and other throat illness of less definite sort in the village anterior to, coincident with, and subsequent to the remarkable outbreak above referred to; and in addition it appeared that at the end of December there had occurred in the Mill Hill Ward of this Urban Sanitary District, three to four miles distant from Hendon village, nearly a dozen cases of very decided diphtheria. As to the total amount of diphtheria and throat illness in the Hendon Ward, and the precise localities that had been affected by it, Dr. Cameron was not yet completely informed; for though some private medical practitioners in the district habitually give him notice of the occurrence of infectious sickness in his district, others withhold information of this sort. Hence it became important to get knowledge of all diphtheria attacks, and of cases of throat illness that might have been diphtheritic in their nature, that had occurred in the parish during LONDON: Printed by GEORGE E. B. EYRE and WILLIAM SPOTTISWOODE, Printers to the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, AND SOLD BY KNIGHT and Co., 90, Fleet Street; SHAW and SONS, Fetter Lane ; HADDEN, BEST, and Co., 227, Strand ; P. S. KING and SON, Canada Building, King Street, Westminster. Price Sixpence. R 6107. 150.—5/83. G 16. Wt. 23174. E. & S. ^