Licence: In copyright
Credit: Dr. Walter Robert Hadwen's works. 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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![board between the two class-rooms and then into the lobby can scarcely be recognised as a satisfactory method of keeping the atmosphere pure. The Building Committee were also authorised by the Board to investigate the matter, and they delivered their Report on December 13th last, when they made the following statement:— There is practically no egress for foul air in any of the rooms except that supplied by the fire-stoves, and they advised that the architect shall be requested to suggest structural alterations in order to secure efficient ventilation. Added to this, the drains of this department were blocked, and when examined after the closing of the schools, it became clear they must have been in this con- dition for a long time. Then, for the first time, an automatic flushing apparatus was introduced. These serious conditions, combined with the additional stress of certain atmospheric influences, can alone, in my opinion, explain the disastrous outburst of smallpox in this school, which so suddenly converted the general outbreak into an epidemic by spreading panic and terror all over the city. But these matters did not come within the scope of the instructions of Dr. Coupland, and therefore, apparently, were not enquired into; consequently with his unswerving faithfulness to his commission, he credits this terrible disaster to> the account of the unvaccinated population of Gloucester. As already quoted, Dr. Coupland says:— It seems a wilful shutting of the eyes to this patent fact [viz.: that the outbreak must have been due to the unvaccinated state of the children] to assume that insanitary conditions were responsible .... for the school invasion. But now that I have furnished details to which it would seem Dr. Coupland has wilfully shut his own eyes, I leave the public to form their judgment upon the issue which lies between us. WHY THE EPIDEMIC ABRUPTLY CEASED. Dr. Coupland proceeded to Gloucester on March 30th, 1896. He found the epidemic had already attained considerable propor- tions, that the hospital accommodation had proved inadequate, and that measures for quarantining infected households in their homes had been in a great measure abandoned, owing to the strain on the resources of the Sanitary Department. As a matter of fact, the epidemic had by that time reached its height, the high-water mark being the week ending April 9th, so that within ten days after his arrival it began a rapid decline; this decline being coincident with the lack of further hospital accommodation, which was packed to overflowing when Dr. Coup- land visited the wards on April 3rd; the practical abandonment of quarantining regulations which could have only served to increase the epidemic; and the cleansing of sewers and house drains by mechanical flushing and copious showers of rain. The flushing was carried out by pumping water from the River Severn, the city supply being inadequate to give effect to the cry I raised](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21361691_0308.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
