THE ENTERIC FEVER EPIDEMIC AT NEWPORT.

1111 the guardians for sanction to to the medical officer of a reasonable sum in payment respect of any assistance which it was necessary for him to obtain in connexion with the administration of the anaesthetic It or of any other cost incurred in connexion with its use. has been the invariable practice of the Board to give their sanction to reasonable payments which have been proposed by guardians in respect of services of the character referred to ; but they deem it desirable to draw the attention of the guardians to the matter with the view of removing any doubt that may be felt on the point."

consider

an

application from

the

’

THE

ENTERIC

FEVER

EPIDEMIC AT

NEWPORT.

WE learn that enteric fever still continues at Newport, in the Isle of Wight, and that Dr. Theodore Thomson, of Medical Department of the Local Government Board, ;is doing his utmost to stir into activity the town council of Over 100 cases of fever this somewhat sleepy borough. must now have occurred, but the town council have not been desirous to know with any precision what mischief was going on in their midst, and hence they avoided adopting the system of notification of infectious diseases. This matter has now been very strongly pressed upon them. How the disease has been produced and how maintained is not, as yet, ,clearly ascertained ; but whatever defects may belong to the system of sewerage, to which suspicion attaches in the minds of many residents, it is by no means clear that the water-supply of the town is above the risk of pollution. Detailed investigation into all the circumstances is by no means rendered easy by the former attitude of the town council and the lack of information as to the earlier attacks of the disease.

the

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THE INTERCOLONIAL MEDICAL CONGRESS OF AUSTRALASIA. A PRELIMINARY announcement of the fourth session of the Intercolonial Medical Congress of Australasia, to be held in Dunedin in February, 1896, will be found on p. 1115. We congratulate the Congress on having selected for general discussion one special subject, for we have frequently pointed out that this is the way in which a congress can be most practically useful. The question of tuberculosis in man and the lower animals has become very urgent of late years, as public opinion in both hemispheres has been agitated by the feeling that phthisis and allied diseases might be the result of using butcher’s meat and milk derived from tuberculous cattle. We referred last week to the diversities of opinion on this subject existing among competent observers and sanitarians, especially as to the amount of obvious tubercle which would warrant the destruction of an entire carcase. We trust that the scientific energy of our Australasian brethren will do something to settle the vexed questions, and that competent representatives from the mother country may attend the Congress and benefit by the experience of men who live in closer connexion with rural problems than some of our philosophers.

THE PLYMOUTH SMALL-POX FLOATING HOSPITAL. THE Plymouth town council have recently obtained and fitted up at considerable expense a commodious vessel known as the .3&M< for use as a small-pox hospital. There appears, however, to have been some difficulty in obtaining for the vessel a suitable mooring station in the waters of Plymouth Sound, and in a recent gale it was found impossible to visit the vessel for two days in the position in which she is at present moored. Further, it is reported that the vessel dragged her anchors, and that the patients are at times troubled with sea-sickness. In this latter connexion it should be borne in mind that the vessel in question

is intended primarily for the use of the townspeople any’ not for the seafaring class, to whom may de would have no terrors. Obviously the position of the ship is a matter of no small importance, more especially as there is apparently no medical officer on board. We believe the, JJIaud is at present anchored in the vicinity of the -PMf, the’ hospital ship belonging to the Plymouth port sanitary authority, and we hear that objections have on more than one occasion been raised as to the somewhat risky and? inaccessible position in which the Pique is moored. It seems, however, that the naval authorities having jurisdiction over the waters of the Sound have not seen their way to affordthe Piqne, and presumably also the Mcczrd, more desirable berths than they at present occupy. Having regard! to the large area of water comprised within Plymouth Sound and the waters abutting upon it -such, for instance, as the Cat-water and the Hamoaze-it seems difficult to believethat the present moorings, where the vessels are exposed to. the south-westerly gales, are the only isolated ones that can. be fonnd. Under any circumstances it behoves the nava and military authorities to render every possible assistanceto both the urban and port sanitary authorities of Plymouth, especially so when it is remembered that the 111aud and the Pique have been of the very greatest service to the town and port, and thus indirectly, if not directly, to the soldiers and sailors in Devonport and Plymouth.

SUCCESSFUL ACTION OF THE FRENCH MEDICAL PRESS ASSOCIATION. THE French Medical Press Association has just appealed to the President of the Republic on behalf of a. medical man whom the Assize Court of Versailles had found guilty, apparently on most insufficient evidence, of being accessory to a criminal abortion, and whom they had sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. This punishment has now been entirely remitted. The finding of the court would seem tc, be very incomprehensible in face of the fact that the girl had been pregnant twice before, and that there was no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, except her statement, to inculpate, the medical man, whose own account of his attendance on the patient was most straightforward, while hers was marked by numerous prevarications and contradictions. The French Medical Press Association is to be warily congratulated on its energy and success in saving an innocent practitioner

successfully

from

a

gross

injustice.

THE

-

NOTIFICATION

OF MEASLES.

IN regard to an outbreak of measles at Stockport, Dr. Charles Porter, the medical officer of health of the borougb, has drawn the attention of his Sanitary Committee to the very heavy mortality from this cause in the second quarter of 1893, the number of deaths during that periocl being equal to the combined total of deaths from small-pox, scarlet fever, and measles during the whole year. In view of the fact that the recently published experience of districts. in which complete notification has been tried has, in his opinion, failed in most cases to show a return commensurate with the heavy outlay incurred, Dr. Porter does. not press for the notification of each case, but as an alternative recommends the adoption, if possible, of a comparatively inexpensive arrangement by which the first attack in every house invaded should be notified, but no case arising in the same house within thirty days. Dr. Porter believes that this expedient, if energetically and systematically adopted, would afford facilities for—(1) advising isolation and proper care of suSerers; (2) controlling school attendances from infected houses ; (3) more promptly detecting infected schools ; and (4) preventing the concealment of cases of scarlet fever under the pretext that theparents thought the disease was measles. Handbills and,

subsequent