Report upon certain epidemic outbreaks of enteric fever, in April, 1880 / by the Medical Officer of Health of Glasgow ; with appended correspondence, &c.

Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report upon certain epidemic outbreaks of enteric fever, in April, 1880 / by the Medical Officer of Health of Glasgow ; with appended correspondence, &c. 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.

    18/70 page 14
    enteric fever, recognized by the Legislature, bej'^ond the region of discussion as a vera causa, and therefore I shall not waste your time over the elaboration of features of this outbreak which are common to many outbreaks of the same kind which are on record, or expand details, as in the case of a previously unheard-of event it would be necessary to do. For reasons which will be apparent in the sequel, I go back in the statistics of enteric fever to 1st April, and come down to the latest date—viz., Saturday, 29th May. The record of deaths possesses more value than that of cases, because it is certainly complete. Every death attributed to enteric fever is known. Taking the date of the occurrence of death, not the date of registration, I find that in all Glasgow, from 1st April, there were 69 deaths of inhabitants (exclusive of per- sons belonging to Possilpark, who died in Belvidere). In March, there were only 11 deaths. In those districts of the city lying north of the Clyde, there were 62 deaths; in those lying south, only 7. Taking those as the product of two months, this represents a death-rate per 100,000 inhabitants of 88 for the north, and 35 for the south, and brings out the most general territorial limitation of the epidemic. It was confined to the north of the Clyde, and Mr. C sends no milk to the south of the river. I shall therefore speak only of the northern districts. During the same period there were registered in the books of the department against this portion of the city, 508 cases, occurring in 372 families. During the month of March there were only 37 cases in 81 families. Spring is the season of minimum prevalence of enteric fever, so that such an outbreak was entirely abnormal. If we take as the basis of a classification of these 508 in- fected persons the origin of their milk supply, and arrange them in two classes—those supplied from dairies or shops which retail milk wholly or partly obtained from C , and those from dairies or shops which retail the milk of other agents, we find 373 cases and 257 families in the former class, and 135 cases and 115 families in the latter—that is to say, 73 per cent, of the cases, and 69 per cent, of the families, were
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