Mr. W. H. Power's report to the local government board on diphtheria at Hern Hill, in the Faversham rural sanitary district ; on the sanitary state of that district ; and on administration by the rural sanitary district.

  • Power, W. H.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mr. W. H. Power's report to the local government board on diphtheria at Hern Hill, in the Faversham rural sanitary district ; on the sanitary state of that district ; and on administration by the rural sanitary district. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    position between Jameston, Manorbier,and Lydstep. She recovered; her brothers and sisters rapidly sickened. Three of them died on three successive days (Nov. 28th, 29th, 30th) ; another on December 2nd, and a fifth on Decemlmr 10th. Thus, within a fort- night there were five deaths in one family alone. Meanwhile, the same disease appeared in two other families in Jameston, one family in ManoiJfier, and one family in Lydstep, all sending children to the same school. In each case the cliild first attacked was one who went to the school, and in two cases the children first attacked had been in close relation at school with one or another of the little Thomases. Tliree deaths occui-red at Manorbier, all in one family (Allen), on December 3rd, 13th, and 31st. One death occurred at Lydstep, on December 8th (Nicholls). In tliis sudden outburst of the disease there were 16, perhaps 17, persons attacked, and nine of them died. 7. There does not appear to have been any extension of the disease from Manorbier or Lydstep, and this fact may with reason be attributed to tlie prompt measures of disinfection taken by the Medical Officer of Health and Ins]:)ector of Nuisances. At Jameston, however, there was a servant girl in the Tliomases’ house, wlio came from the parish of Carew, in the northern part of the union. She had a sore throat on November 24th (a week after the first appearance of the disease in the Thomases’ family) and returned next day to her home in Carew, a quarryman’s cottage of the poorest class, with a filthy back yard sloping down to the back door. She stayed there a week, and then returned to Jameston on December 1st. Her brother at Carev/, aged 1()|, was taken ill on December 4th and died on December 11th, of “ ulcerated sore throat.” There was no other case of sore throat in Carew. 8. The course of the epidemic, then, after its first commencement in the Thomases’ family, presents no difficulty of explanation. But how did it originate ? There had been recently, as far as was known, no previous case of sore throat in the neighbour- hood. There was no disease among animals. Mr. Thomas’s house was remarkably free from vermin. One of the little Thomases had spent a fortnight at Pembroke Dock, some time in the summer or early autumn (the date was not remembered, Imt it was “ when scarlet beans were in season,”) but there had been no case of diphtheria or sore throat in the street, or in the town. Looking through the deatli-register, I found that there had been a death from “ croup ” in Pembroke Dock in May, but nothing else bearing the slightest semblance of diphtheria. Neither ha(i there been any diphtheria in the town of Pembroke. Air. Thomas’s business as a carpenter takes him about the country a good deal, and it is not impossible that he may unwittingly have been in contact with a previous case of diphtheria, and may have brought home the infection, but he does not remember any occurrence that could be so construed. 9. I examined the death-register for the Tenby sub-district (which includes Manorbier parish), and found that there had been a death from diphtheria in Tenby on the 7th of April 1879. This case, as I learned by inquiry among the medical men in Tenby, occurred in a family which had previously lost a child from diphtheria in a distant part of Carmarthenshire, and had brought the other child (who had at first escaped the infection) to Tenby for safety. The greatest care was taken to disinfect the house in which this death occurred, by means of carbolic acid. None of the four medical men in Tenby whom I questioned had known of any subsequent case of diphtheria or sore throat in the town. The death-register contains record of a death from “ laryngitis ” on the 19th of April in Tenby, and another death from the same cause in July on Caldy island. I have no reason to suppose that either of these was really a death from diphtheria. 10. On September 18th, 1879. a child of seven years, the daughter of a labourer, named Harries, living at a poor cottage in a bleak situation on the very crest of the Ridgeway, was taken suddenly ill, and died next day, September 19th, before medical aid arrived. The death was registered from “ croup.” She had been “ subject to croup” since she was a year old. Her neck (the mother stated) was not swollen, bxit was discoloured after death. Her brother, a year younger, was taken ill about the same time, and was appa- rently recovering, but had a relapse and died on October 12th. The medical attendant gave a certificate of death from ‘'’oedema of glottis,” but on my making further inquiry regarding this case, he had no recollection of the circumstances, and could find no note relating to it. Two other children in the same family, aged five and three, were attacked a week after the elder ones, but recovered. There was swelling of the glands of the neck in these three later cases. An elder brother (eiglit) escaped altogether. This was certainly a contagious throat disease, and as there is no reason whatever to suppose that it was scarlet fever, we may think it was probably diphtheria. These children attended a school in the village of Saint Florence on the north side of the Ridgeway. On making inquiry of the schoolmaster and at several houses in St. Florence, I ascer-