[Report 1908] / Medical Officer of Health, Pontypool Local Board / U.D.C.

  • Pontypool (Wales). Local Board.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1908] / Medical Officer of Health, Pontypool Local Board / U.D.C. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    nurses do this ; they also act informally as sanitary inspectors, and bring1 to the notice of your officers defects that might go unnoticed. Isolation Hospital. I have dwelt on the need of an isolation hospital before, and shall be glad if the Council will con- sider this subject. There is a great and growing need for such an institution, and my impression is that the general public are daily seeing the benefits of hospitals where they can send their sick* especially in the case of infectious diseases oceuring in a family. I should like an hospital for your district alone, and I hope it will soon be considered. It is absolutely useless to expect complete isolation of infectious diseases in ordinary cottages. The Water Supply. I have had no complaint of any deficiency in the supply during 1908. I have caused the Puntypool Gas and Water Company’s water to be analysed twice during the year, and 1 am glad to say it was found good for drinking and domestic uses. Now that the Council’s action against the Pontypool Gas and Water Company for damages arising out of the typhoid epidemic of 1905 has been settled, it is important to see that the future is better equipped than has been the case in the past in the matter of a pure water supply. Filtration. I learn that as one result of this action, and on the intervention of the Attorney-General, the Water Company have installed at various points on their ystem Bell’s patent filters. The working and effects of these require careful observation in the con- sumers’ interests. The chief advantages of this type of filter appear to be the ease and simplicity in manipulation, small space occupied, rapidity of flow, and general independence of gradients, whereby loss of head to mains, so frequent a feature where gravity beds are in use, is avoided. The chief objection to this class of filter appears to be a risk of concretions and stoppages in mains arising from the use of coagulants like alumina. Experts on this subject do not consider this a practical dis- ability, but it is an argument which has been ad- vanced against their use. Fresh Sources of Supply. I am glad to notice that (doubtless owing to pressure brought by the local Sanitary Authorities
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