[Report 1898] / Medical Officer of Health, Paignton U.D.C.
- Paignton (England). Urban District Council.
- Date:
- 1898
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: [Report 1898] / Medical Officer of Health, Paignton U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.
8/14 page 6
![School In no case was I able to connect this disease with Attendance, attendance in our public schools, but representation was in relation to ^ls to the desirability of having the drainage of the schools overhauled, and at the request of the School Board Mr. Crathorn, the Sanitary Inspector, made a thorough examination. Many and serious defects were found in the drainage, all of which were remedied, and in one case practically a new system was laid down. Now I can feel confident that should cases occur amongst the scholars, it will not be due to any sanitary defect of the public schools. Enteric Nine cases were notified—this would seem a larp'e o Fever. number—but ought all these cases to have occurred, could they have been prevevented ? The cases fall naturally into three groups :— is^ grojip.—Three cases notified in January. These were the two children and nurse of a case notified in December, 1897. Paignton had its Isolation Hospital, but you had not the power to compel removal of the cases there. Not until the father had two children down with fever, as well as his wife, would he submit, and even then, when it was manifest to anybody that there was not efficient isolation, [the two children were in a small room without a fireplace and with a very small window] a magistrates’ order had to be obtained before all three were taken to the Isolation H ospital. Later, the nurse, who was also washerwoman for these people, fell ill. To me it seems plain that these three cases might and ought to have been prevented. 2nd group.—-Two cases notified in June. These were two fishermen working together ; both were in the habit of collecting and eating large quantities of mussels, three or four quarts daily, collected in the Paignton Harbour, through which a stream runs, and in which they washed their mussels. At one point our main sewer crosses this stream, in fact, the two culverts are immediately one upon the other, and unfortunately there was a sinkage of the fresh water culvert, which had recently been relaid, and with this sinkage came a fracture of the sewer culvert, thus permitting contamination of the stream. As soon as this leak was discovered it was remedied, and no fresh case has occurred attributable to this cause, but here also we had a secondary case. Neither of these men would go to the Isolation Hospital, and in one case the nurse, sister to one of the young* men, was taken ill with fever. This secondary case was removed to the Isolation Hospital, and is another example of locking the stable door too late. grdgroup. — This group consists of three isolated cases : No. I, an adult who was working in a neighbouring town came home ill with fever. No. 2, also an adult, who had certainly been visiting out of the town well within the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2998323x_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
