[Report 1897] / Medical Officer of Health, Derbyshire County Council.

  • Derbyshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1897] / Medical Officer of Health, Derbyshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of vitality and the power of spreading abroad of the Typhoid Bacillus have been maintained at varying temperatures for periods of no less than 214 and 268 days, that is to say, some seven and nine months.” Sir Bichard Thorne, in discussing measures which should be taken to prevent the Typhoid Bacillus gaining access to soil, advocates, in the first instance, “ The paving of open spaces about dwellings.” “ Indeed,” he writes, “it is well known not only that the paving of yards about small cottages and tenement property has in its results been shown to be a public health measure of first importance, but also that the value of such a measure depends largely on the use of a form of pavement which really insures impermeability.” He also points out that where the privy midden remains there all the conditions exist for the dissemination of Typhoid Fever. Again, to quote his wTords, “ The privy midden which still prevails in many Midland towns presents every feature that should be studiously avoided. Generally sunk below the surface of the ground, often open to the rainfall, always storing up decomposing refuse in close proxim- ity to dwellings, it provides almost every condition favourable to the production of a nuisance, to the saturation of soil with filth, and to the setting up and maintenance of those very con- ditions which seem to be essential to the vitality and multiplica- tion of the Typhoid Bacillus. The fact that with our present knowledge, such a structure as the common midden privy should still exist in our midst, is the greatest blot which attaches to English sanitary administration at the close of the nineteenth century.” In the crusade that has been waged against polluted water as a cause of Typhoid, the importance of other causes has been minimised. The pollution of the ground itself is the chief of these. During the last six years I have seen at least one epidemic of Typhoid a year, clearly due to the contamination of the ground close to dwellings by Typhoid excreta. The remedies for typhoid fever and other filth diseases, apart from pure water supplies, are :— 1. The adoption of water closets, whereby the excreta is rapidly removed from the habitations. 2. The paving of back yards. 8. Public scavenging. 4. The separate collection and destruction by burning, or the application of chloride of lime, of the excreta from typhoid patients.