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APPOINTMENTS TO THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD.
THE SPREAD OF SMALL-POX.
of all means for ascertaining the death of medical and in the Register for 1892 gives 581 man, - every s the deaths for 1891. For the last sixteen years the average of deaths annually has been 570. For the last five years the In four years only has the number exceeded average is 529. 600. It speaks much for the care with which this information is gathered that it brings the list up to the highest possible figure. As our readers are aware the gaps made by death are always more than filled by the plentiful additions to the profession. In the year 1891 no less than 1345 were .added. This does not diminish the pain with which many of the losses have to be recorded, but it relieves the national mind of the fear of any scarcity in the supply of healers. takes
advantage
97
for this economical mode of
meeting
a
serious
difficulty,
must express a preference for the entire removal of human remains from the heart of the City to some suburban cemetery. As a matter of fact, some such experiment as he made so successfully was tried in one of the churches to which he refers, with the result of making matters worse instead of better. Burial in the earth, not entombment, must be considered as the order of the day, subject to the searching inquiry which will probably soon have to be made into the whole matter. we
APPOINTMENTS TO THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD.
delay is being occasioned in the final selection of inspectors by which the Medical Department of the Local SOME
THE SPREAD OF SMALL-POX. TEN years have elapsed since the Royal Commission on Small-pox and Fever Hospitals reported that "it is evidently of paramount importance that the areas of the small-pox
well as their administration should be rigorously separated from those of the fever hospitals ; and, further, that eheir construction should be such as to reduce within the smallest limits the chance of spreading infection." Since then we have repeatedly had instances of the spread of smallpox from buildings in which cases of that disease have been aggregated. When Warrington attempted it recently the patients professedly under isolation in other pavilions contracted small-pox, and now we learn that in Leicester the same thing has taken place. No less than fifteen scarlet fever patients contracted small-pox in a so-called isolation hospital and the scarlet fever wards had to be closed. The time has surely arrived for adopting some reasonable action .as to the isolation of small-pox in the provinces, for the disease ’is still extending in many parts of England. Last week brings mews of three fresh cases at Batley, three at Dewsbury, three .n.t Bootle, five at Chadderton, seven at Oldham, seven at Barnsley, four at Rotherham, five at Huddersfield, four at York, six at Leicester, three at Southampton (the outbreak at which place is more fully dealt with elsewhere), twenty-one at Manchester, three at Wakefield, and there have also been smaller outbreaks at Bradford, Halifax, Birkenhead, Liverpool, Lancaster, Birmingham, Derby, Darlington, Swansea, Bakewards
as
,
Government Board is to be reinforced in view of the increased duties which will be involved in consequence of the prospects of cholera during the current year. But we understand that three of the intended appointments have now been made for a period of one calendar year. The gentlemen thus appointed are Mr. Evan Evans, D.P.H., now assisting in the health department of Bethnal Green ; Dr. Thomas Horne, formerly medical officer of health for Sandwich ; and Dr. Hector M’Lean Wilson, assistant medical officer of health for Leeds. ____
UNQUALIFIED PRACTITIONERS IN HULL. THE deputy coroner for Hull made some strong and proper observations a few days ago in commenting on the case of a child four years and a half old, which had been taken by its parents to the surgery of Dr. Haynes, but was attended by
Mr. E. H. Knight without authority or qualification to practise medicine. He was not even an assistant to a qualified practitioner, but used that surgery two years and a half after Dr. Haynes had left it in such a way as to mislead the public. The deputy coroner made an important in his remarks. We are apt to think that it is only point use the false of titles specified in the Medical Act that by the public is misled, but the word "surgery" on a sign or a brass plate is as misleading as the word surgeon and the coroner expressed himself greatly astonished that there should be in a populous street a gentleman who had a well, Bedale, Durham, Castle-Bytham, Louth, Pontefract, Runcorn and Denaby Main. Nine cases are now under sign above his door which led persons to believe that the premises were tenanted and used as a surgery while they treatment in the last-named place. were occupied by a totally unqualified man.
DECAYING HUMANITY IN
OUR CHURCHES.
IMPORTANT PROSECUTION UNDER THE
MARGARINE ACT. A letter appeared in The Times some days ago from Major of St. Antholin’s the churchwarden for THE chief Joseph, parish upsanitary inspector of Wigan, who is also inspector wards of twenty years. In it he describes his action as under the Food and Drugs Adulteration Act, has been remarkregards the bodies interred in the vaults of the church at the ably active since his appointment. Quite recently he time of the removal of the building. He found upwards of six was the means of bringing to justice a tradesman in that - hundred coffins, nearly every one of which was in precisely the town for exposing margarine as butter; the magistrates same state as those described as being in the churches of St. convicted and fined the defendant ;f20 and costs. Now a case-a he has had much more Woolnothand case St. "I important gross Mary placed, "he proceeds, Mary-at-Hill. on and rich. A of fraud the woman in a outer dressed as a coffin new and instead of to shell ; public, poor " every going the expense of removing them to Ilford I enlarged the rector’s respectable farmer’s wife was accustomed to attend the Wigan vault at the end of the church and there deposited the coffins, market on the most important market day-namely, Fridaymaking a register of such. The work was performed under and beside her stall of cheese and eggs she had a basket ,the superintendence of the late Dr. Tidy and Dr. Sedgwick containing what she sold as butter in "prints." He asked launders, under whose orders large quantities of carbolic acid her what was in the basket and she said butter. He were used and a small ration of rum was served every two hours asked to see it and she picked it up and uncovered ’to the workmen employed. We had no case of sickness it, and it contained "prints" of one pound, this and neither the public nor the friends of the deceased were being a form in which butter is put up by farmers n any way shocked....... I write this in the hope that you for sale. The inspector then wanted to buy some for analysis, may be able to spare space for its insertion and that it may and thereupon the defendant said the basket did not ae useful to the churchwardens of the two before-named to her, and that a woman had left it with her that morning. ’parishes and be the means of saving outlay to the She could give no information regarding this woman. The ’.2arishioners." While giving every credit toMajor Joseph inspector took charge of the basket. Two pieces of this so-
belong
of all means for ascertaining the death of medical and in the Register for 1892 gives 581 man, - every s the deaths for 1891. For the last sixteen years the average of deaths annually has been 570. For the last five years the In four years only has the number exceeded average is 529. 600. It speaks much for the care with which this information is gathered that it brings the list up to the highest possible figure. As our readers are aware the gaps made by death are always more than filled by the plentiful additions to the profession. In the year 1891 no less than 1345 were .added. This does not diminish the pain with which many of the losses have to be recorded, but it relieves the national mind of the fear of any scarcity in the supply of healers. takes
advantage
97
for this economical mode of
meeting
a
serious
difficulty,
must express a preference for the entire removal of human remains from the heart of the City to some suburban cemetery. As a matter of fact, some such experiment as he made so successfully was tried in one of the churches to which he refers, with the result of making matters worse instead of better. Burial in the earth, not entombment, must be considered as the order of the day, subject to the searching inquiry which will probably soon have to be made into the whole matter. we
APPOINTMENTS TO THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD.
delay is being occasioned in the final selection of inspectors by which the Medical Department of the Local SOME
THE SPREAD OF SMALL-POX. TEN years have elapsed since the Royal Commission on Small-pox and Fever Hospitals reported that "it is evidently of paramount importance that the areas of the small-pox
well as their administration should be rigorously separated from those of the fever hospitals ; and, further, that eheir construction should be such as to reduce within the smallest limits the chance of spreading infection." Since then we have repeatedly had instances of the spread of smallpox from buildings in which cases of that disease have been aggregated. When Warrington attempted it recently the patients professedly under isolation in other pavilions contracted small-pox, and now we learn that in Leicester the same thing has taken place. No less than fifteen scarlet fever patients contracted small-pox in a so-called isolation hospital and the scarlet fever wards had to be closed. The time has surely arrived for adopting some reasonable action .as to the isolation of small-pox in the provinces, for the disease ’is still extending in many parts of England. Last week brings mews of three fresh cases at Batley, three at Dewsbury, three .n.t Bootle, five at Chadderton, seven at Oldham, seven at Barnsley, four at Rotherham, five at Huddersfield, four at York, six at Leicester, three at Southampton (the outbreak at which place is more fully dealt with elsewhere), twenty-one at Manchester, three at Wakefield, and there have also been smaller outbreaks at Bradford, Halifax, Birkenhead, Liverpool, Lancaster, Birmingham, Derby, Darlington, Swansea, Bakewards
as
,
Government Board is to be reinforced in view of the increased duties which will be involved in consequence of the prospects of cholera during the current year. But we understand that three of the intended appointments have now been made for a period of one calendar year. The gentlemen thus appointed are Mr. Evan Evans, D.P.H., now assisting in the health department of Bethnal Green ; Dr. Thomas Horne, formerly medical officer of health for Sandwich ; and Dr. Hector M’Lean Wilson, assistant medical officer of health for Leeds. ____
UNQUALIFIED PRACTITIONERS IN HULL. THE deputy coroner for Hull made some strong and proper observations a few days ago in commenting on the case of a child four years and a half old, which had been taken by its parents to the surgery of Dr. Haynes, but was attended by
Mr. E. H. Knight without authority or qualification to practise medicine. He was not even an assistant to a qualified practitioner, but used that surgery two years and a half after Dr. Haynes had left it in such a way as to mislead the public. The deputy coroner made an important in his remarks. We are apt to think that it is only point use the false of titles specified in the Medical Act that by the public is misled, but the word "surgery" on a sign or a brass plate is as misleading as the word surgeon and the coroner expressed himself greatly astonished that there should be in a populous street a gentleman who had a well, Bedale, Durham, Castle-Bytham, Louth, Pontefract, Runcorn and Denaby Main. Nine cases are now under sign above his door which led persons to believe that the premises were tenanted and used as a surgery while they treatment in the last-named place. were occupied by a totally unqualified man.
DECAYING HUMANITY IN
OUR CHURCHES.
IMPORTANT PROSECUTION UNDER THE
MARGARINE ACT. A letter appeared in The Times some days ago from Major of St. Antholin’s the churchwarden for THE chief Joseph, parish upsanitary inspector of Wigan, who is also inspector wards of twenty years. In it he describes his action as under the Food and Drugs Adulteration Act, has been remarkregards the bodies interred in the vaults of the church at the ably active since his appointment. Quite recently he time of the removal of the building. He found upwards of six was the means of bringing to justice a tradesman in that - hundred coffins, nearly every one of which was in precisely the town for exposing margarine as butter; the magistrates same state as those described as being in the churches of St. convicted and fined the defendant ;f20 and costs. Now a case-a he has had much more Woolnothand case St. "I important gross Mary placed, "he proceeds, Mary-at-Hill. on and rich. A of fraud the woman in a outer dressed as a coffin new and instead of to shell ; public, poor " every going the expense of removing them to Ilford I enlarged the rector’s respectable farmer’s wife was accustomed to attend the Wigan vault at the end of the church and there deposited the coffins, market on the most important market day-namely, Fridaymaking a register of such. The work was performed under and beside her stall of cheese and eggs she had a basket ,the superintendence of the late Dr. Tidy and Dr. Sedgwick containing what she sold as butter in "prints." He asked launders, under whose orders large quantities of carbolic acid her what was in the basket and she said butter. He were used and a small ration of rum was served every two hours asked to see it and she picked it up and uncovered ’to the workmen employed. We had no case of sickness it, and it contained "prints" of one pound, this and neither the public nor the friends of the deceased were being a form in which butter is put up by farmers n any way shocked....... I write this in the hope that you for sale. The inspector then wanted to buy some for analysis, may be able to spare space for its insertion and that it may and thereupon the defendant said the basket did not ae useful to the churchwardens of the two before-named to her, and that a woman had left it with her that morning. ’parishes and be the means of saving outlay to the She could give no information regarding this woman. The ’.2arishioners." While giving every credit toMajor Joseph inspector took charge of the basket. Two pieces of this so-
belong