Dr. Airy's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of diphtheria in 1889 in the Samford rural sanitary district (Suffolk) / [Hubert Airy].

  • Airy, Hubert, 1838-1903.
Date:
[1890]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. Airy's report to the Local Government Board on an outbreak of diphtheria in 1889 in the Samford rural sanitary district (Suffolk) / [Hubert Airy]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    exposed situation of the Bullards’ cottage suggested the idea of something* carried by the wind, and on examining the weather charts and returns pub¬ lished by the Meteorological Office it appears that on Tuesday July 30th the wind was blowing from the east, that is from Chelmondiston to Tatting- stone. G’ (The nearest stations in connexion with the Meteorological Office are at Yar¬ mouth and Cambridge. At both these places the wind was E. at 8 a.m. on Tuesday, July 30th. At Woodbridge it was E.N.E. at 9.5 a.m.) The Bullards’ cottage (one of two under the same roof ) is old and rather damp. The surface soil is gravelly, the sub-soil, sand. Water for all purposes was drawn from a well. It was analysed and found polluted, but there was no reason to think that this was not its normal condition, and no reason why this solitary well should suddenly have developed the poison of diphtheria. ^ Another family of Bullards in the same parish was attacked in October. They had done some washing for the first family about a week before. For two months there were no more cases in Tattingstone, but in the middle of December there were some fresh cases in other families. Meanwhile the epidemic continued at Chelmondiston and Pin Mill. Four fresh families were infected in August, before and during the closure of the school for the harvest holiday; but in the last fortnight of the holiday there were no fresh invasions. A child named William Miles (8 years) died on September 2nd in a family previously infected. The school was re-opened on September 9th and remained open for a month. In the last two weeks of September two fresh families were attacked. In the first week in October there was an alarming extension of the epidemic. Not only did the disease appear in nine families previously untouched by it in Chelmondiston, and one in Pin Mill, but it broke out also in the parishes of Wherstead to the west and Shotley to the east. There had been a school treat on September 26, at Woolverstone (a parish between Chelmondiston and Wherstead), at which numbers of school children from neighbouring villages were present, and this appeared to give facilities for the spread of the infection. The Chelmondiston School was closed again from October 9 to November 11. In Shotley the disease was first recognized in an old man named Palmer, aged 75 years, who was taken ill and died on October 9. His wife had pre¬ viously fallen ill and died (September 9) after attending one of the cases of diphtheria (Ruffles) in Chelmondiston in August. The circumstances of her death were somewhat obscure, and a Coroner’s inquest was held. The cause of death was returned as “ Syncope arising from protracted cold and want of nourishment,” but I learnt that there was good ground for believing that the illness was diphtheria, quite apart from the relation of this case to others. Another case occurred in Shotley in the latter part of October in a boy named Rlvois, who had not been at Chelmondiston for five weeks before he was taken ill, and who was not known to have been, exposed to danger of infection in any way. In Wherstead to the west of Chelmondiston, two cases occurred in two different families, Scott and Theobald. Both ended fatally on October 7; and on the same day, at Chelmondiston, a little girl, Minnie King, 12 years', died very suddenly of “ paralysis, post diphtheritic.” About the middle of October, diphtheria broke out in the village of Hark- stead, two miles to the south-west of Chelmondiston, among the children attending the Harkstead school. This might possibly be accounted for by communication with Chelmondiston. Again there was an isolated outbreak in one family in the parish ol Erwarton, which abuts on the River Stour and has its own landing-place, at which cargoes of London manure are occasionally discharged. A schoolboy had come home with sore throat from Ipswich a week before; so it was doubtful whether this outbreak was not independent of those under inquiry. There were also some cases in the village of Holbrook, in the centre of the sub-district, probably traceable to a case which was brought to Holbrook from Chelmondiston. The last fatal case was that of a boy, George Sharinan, 7 years, at Chelmondiston, who died on November 26. A 2 U 63085,