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'Veritas' on, 242

warming and lighting, by Capt.
Douglas Galton, C.B., rev., 114
Ventilators, Aldous & Co.'s, 414. 475: Ban-
ner's, 398; olus Co.'s, 37, 117, 147, 209,
321
Awards for at the Health Exhi-
bition, Aldous & Son on, 285, 388; Brothers
& Co. on, 283; Mr. W. P. Buchan on, 283,
377 R. Boyle & Son on, 241, 285, 336; Mr.
D. Clark on, 283; Mr. S. C. Dean on, 385;
'Experience' on, 385; Kite & Co. on, 28;
Boyle's, 5, 58, 101, 474
Cowell's patent. 532
Ewart's 414; Ellison's, 371
Exhaust, Mr. Walker, English

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293

impure, cause of, at Kendal, 243
Watering-places, sanitary state of, 498
Watering the streets, 546
Water law, defects in the, 505

451

potable, organic ingredients of, 548
purification of, 328

Whitechapel, labourers' dwellings in, 471
open spaces in, 341
sanitary state of, 442

White lead, Mr. Condy's improved system for
the manufacture of, 581

non-poisonous, Freeman's, 582
poisoning, 356

Whiteman, Mr. George (Mexborough), a com.
mendable act of, 83

Mr. W. T., on unpatented inven-
tions, 282

White's hygeian rock building composition,

415

on, Whitestown, insanitary conditions at, 409
Wholesome adulteration, 103

rate, alleged excess of, 431
rates, 20, 216, 255, 455
Regulation Bill, Lord Camperdown's,

- supplies, cutting off of, 22, 384
domestic, the selection of,
Professor P. Frankland on, 547
supply, 340
supply and drainage of Oxford, 565
small towns in
Ireland, 165
at Newcastle and Gateshead, 388
deficient at Plaistow, 289
for fire extinguishing purposes,

in colliery villages, county Dur.

Glasgow, 358
ham, 304

of Lincoln, 368

of London, 59

of Newmarket, 124

Wright's Mr. G., exhibit at the Architectural
and Building Trades Exhibition, 472
Wigan, insanitary, 105

Wilkes's metallic flooring and Eureka Co.'s
exhibit at the Architectural and Building
Trades Exhibition, 473

Willesden Paper Co.'s award at the Building
Trades' Exhibition, 477

Williams, Frodsham, & Co.'s improved metallic
casements, 476

Willoughby, Dr., on figures, facts, and fal-
lacies, 209

Wilson & Sons' cooking and heating stoves, 475
Engineering Co.'s award at the Sanitary
Institute Congress, 176
exhibit at the Archi-
tectural and Building Trades' Exhibition, 475
Wilson's Buildings, City of London, 78
Window-sash, Verity Brotners, reversible, 371
Windsor Urban Sanitary Authority, 194
Wingate, Mr. C. T., on sanitary building laws
in York, 11

Winter health-resorts, 194

Withington, Medical Officer's report, 32, 528
Wolpert's simple method of testing the purity
of air, 402

to cities and towns, regulation of, Wolverhampton, poisoning from salmon in a

305
to Irish towns, 167
Water test, the, J. R. T. on, 242
undertakers, 546

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370

474

the Harding Ventilator Co., 372,

Ventnor Local Board, 344
Verity Brothers, new reversible sash window,
371

window gearing, 415
Vienna, small-pox in, 568
Vital statistics of Berlin, Munich and Frank-
fort for 1884, 568

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waste preventing cisterns, Wainwright's,

waste preventor, Messenger's, 171
works at Southborough, opening
580
new at Kenilworth, 388
Water Works Rating Bills, 86

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of, Worcester guardians and urban powers, 344
typhoid fever in, 62

Statistics, 1885, rev., 597
Watford Local Government district, 344
Medical Officer's report, 528
Watson, Dr. T., on the need of public park
and swimming bath for Tottenham, 80
Wazon, M., on Les Principes Techniques d'As-
sainissement des Villes et Habitations, rev.,
482

Weaver, Mr. W., sewer ventilation and house
sanitation, 411

Webb, Mr., on the suitability of materials used
in plumbing as a substitute for lead, 230
Webb's, waterproof and hygienic boots, &c.,

176
Wednesbury, applications for surveyorship,
598

Medical Officer's report, 528
Sanitary Officer's report, 531
Weeden's adjustable support for water-closet
basins, 379

Wellingborough Local Board, 435

rural, sanitary authority, 602
Wells, Abyssinian or tube, 68

Mr. F., on the formation of district
associations of plumbers', 231
'Wenham' patent lamp, 173
West & Co.'s cooking and heating stoves, 475
Westbury-on-Severn Guardians, 489
'Westgarth' prizes, 600

West Ham, Sanitary Inspector's report, 75
West Hartlepool improvement commissioners,
West's cooking and heating stoves, 475
West Sussex, Medical Officers' report, 31

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Work and feeding, 316

for the unemployed, 511

Workhouses, consumption of stimulants in, 462
Working classes, fish for the, 16

housing of, 78

of the Alkali Acts, 2:2
Workmen's dwellings, 190

493

cheap ventilation for, 117
in East Stonehouse, 542
municipal provision of,
at Leith, 38
Boyle's ventilation for, 75
Workshop sanitation, 357
Worsborough, Medical Officer's report, 32
Wortley Guardians, 344
Wrexham Union rural, northern districts,
Sanitary Inspector's report, 53!
Wright & Co.'s award at the Sanitary Institute
Congress, 176

exhibit at the Architectural and
Building Trades Exhibition, 475
Wright, Dr. Thomas, the late, 291

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ORIGINAL PAPERS.

OUR CANAL POPULATION AND THE CANAL BOATS ACT OF 1877, AND THE AMENDING BILLS OF 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884.

By GEORGE SMITH, of Coalville.

FOR more than a century our canal-boat toilers have roamed over the country with their floating homes, carrying goods and spreading disease and immorality, which have, in sadly too many instances, left unhealthy influences on their track.

The science of sanitation and the blessings of education were, and are still, almost unknown to our canal-boat workers. It is fearful to contemplate the amount of infectious diseases that have been carried from town to town and village to village during the last century.

Within the last few years 2,000 deaths took place in a very short space of time in one of our large towns, which disease, the medical officer of health said, was introduced to the town by a canal boat; in fact, it is to be feared that hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths have taken place since the passing of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 by infectious diseases, that have been carried to various parts of the country by canal boats and travelling tents and

vans.

A boat from Staffordshire, with several children having small-pox on board, was for some days last summer among a number of boats, upon which and round them there were some hundred men, women, and children, of all ages and sizes, at Lower Heyford Ironworks, and unchecked by either the sanitary inspector or doctor until brought to bay by Mr. Collins, the manager. How long it had been moving to and fro among the boats in the Staffordshire and other districts before it arrived at Lower Heyford I could not learn.

A few months ago I came upon a boat at Brauston in which there were five children fearfully ill of fever. In addition to the five children there were a man, woman, and a 'chap.'

Recently a boatman lay ill of a most dangerous fever in a cabin in Staffordshire, and while he lay there his wife was confined of a baby by his side. Within the last few weeks a canal boat carried small-pox from Worcestershire to Gloucestershire; and, more recently still, it has been conveyed from near London to some of the midland towns. In the boat there were man, woman, 'chap,' and fivesome say six-children. The woman, instead of stopping at her cottage home in the country, as she could afford to do, and educating their children, had preferred to huddle together in the cabin, not six feet square, and to put their linen out to be washed where small-pox was at work; and it is to be feared that, in defiance of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 and all sanitary and educational laws, the seeds of this dreadful disease will be producing a crop of work for the doctors and sanitary officers where it is the least expected.

After some years of hard work and agitation, with a view to secure the education of the canal children, and the placing of their floating homes under proper sanitary laws, and also to prevent the fearful amount of promiscuous huddling together there is in the

cabins of both sexes and all ages, the Canal Boats Act was passed, based on a memorial I drew up in 1873, and which was signed by seven boatmen, only one of whom could write his own name, and is as follows:

'We, the undersigned, think and speak, from conversations we have had with other boatmen, that no child under thirteen and no female under eighteen years of age should be employed on or allowed to sleep in canal boats. The cabins should be so made as to allow of proper ventilation, and not less than 100 cubic feet of spice for each person. Power should be given to the workshop or sanitary authrities to enter a boat at any time, and either deta n or order to be removed any person suffering from infectious diseases on board. The name of the owner, the number of the crew, and date when last examined by the inspector should be painted in a prominent place on the boat. Our children ought to be educated and protected as children on other work are. We regret to think that not more than two out of every 100 under the age of fourteen can read or write, and not more than five out of every 100 attend a place of worship on Sundays.'

After no little amount of trouble I succeeded in inducing the Government, in 1875, to allow the Royal Factory and Workshops Act Commission to inquire into the condition of our canal population ; the chairman being Sir James Fergusson, vicechairman, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the secretary, Sir George Young. The result, after hearing a mass of evidence from boatmen, boatwomen, canal proprietors, agents, factory inspectors, magistrates, and others, was that they recommended in their report that no women and children should be allowed to live in the cabins at all, which cribbed homes, I say most certainly, were never intended to be sleeping quarters for more than two or three men or youths. So long as the canal traffic was chiefly in the hands of the canal proprietors, the evils of huddling promiscuously together had been fairly kept under control by pressing their own regulations. Now the canal proprietors concern themselves more about the traffic itself than the people engaged in it, and have, as a consequence, lost all moral control over the boat people, as the boats are no longer owned by them. This state of things opened the cabin doors for the women and children wider than they had ever been before-the boatmen not caring to shut them-with a sad result not only easy enough for a child to see, but a result that has told its tale upon the country, and upon the boatmen themselves. We may shut our eyes to the fact; nevertheless, the fact remains, viz., that the boatmen and their families of to-day are not so healthy as the boaters of the past generations. Disease is more rife among the children, bottles of physic are more frequently called for at the chemists, as they move through the country, and the hoarse, gruff cough and voices are more noticeable among the women than formerly.

An English narrow canal-boat cabin is about 8 feet 6 inches long, 5 feet 6 inches wide and 5 feet high, and is the floating home of a boatman and his wife and three, four, five, or six children of both sexes and all ages and sizes, with a 'chap' frequently into the bargain.

In this little space boaters are born, li e, and die; and it is in this little place that nearly all their larder, kitchen, pariour, an 1 bedroom requisites are stored.

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The foul, poisonous atmosphere arising from the boatmen and their families when they are crouched in their little beds is at times, as they have often told me, 'enough to poison pigs.'

It is only fair to say that some of the boaters are as respectable as any other class of workers, and their homes as 'clean as pinks.'

The appearance of our boating population, taken as a whole, presents the features more marked, especially among the children, than when I first became practically acquainted with the boatmen and their families, some forty years ago; that is to say, the stout, strong and healthy boaters are not so numerous as formerly, and their places are being filled up on the one hand by the thin, poor, haggard, careworn and dejected creatures.

To my mind the two main causes of this are, first, the unhealthy state of the cabins and want of proper ventilation; second, working in their damp clothes-for the women and children have no convenience to dry them when they get wet; and, thirdly, to the amount of drinking they indulge in; for on an average throughout the country a boatman will spend six shillings per week in beer. But the question which arose in my mind whenever thinking the subject over during a lifetime of observation, but more especially since I began the agitation in 1872, was how to get rid of the evils surrounding boating life.

My long experience has taught me this: if action is taken wisely, two of the evils can be dealt with by laws that are applicable to the rest of the community; in fact, they have been slightly applied by the powers that are already in the Canal Boats' Act of 1877, but not so much as is desirable. Overcrowding in the cabin continues, and the education of the children is an object not yet accomplished. The third evil must be got rid of, chiefly, by moral and philanthropic agencies and influences.

Inspection under the Act of 1877 is little better than a farce. Some of the registration authorities of the Local Government Board have taken no steps to carry out the Act of 1877. Others have appointed officers to see to it, but have not given any salary for doing the work. That part of the work, namely registration, for which the sanitary authorities have received a fee of 5s., has been partly carried out. Eight thousand boats have been registered, with many thousands to follow, which registration, if the system of registration I recommend is not continued, so as to be able to tell who owns the boats and the names of them who live in them, will be worse than useless. The local inspectors appointed by the registration authorities have come from the ranks of policemen, surveyors, medical officers, and sanitary inspectors, and some sanitary authorities have been appointed registration authorities against their wish. Thus it will be seen that the system of inspection at present carried out is all heads and tails,' 'topsy turvy' fashion, and in anything but a satisfactory manner. Carelessness, apathy, and indifference have run through the inspection and everything connected with the Acts from the day it came into operation to the present time. With these failing points and difficulties staring us in the face, it has become an imperative and absolute necessity that, if the little good that has been gained by the Act of 1877 is to be maintained, the seed sown to bring fruit, and the fabrics, which are to be an ornament to the land, reared upon the foundations laid in 1877, the close upon 30,000 canal children educated-not

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10 per cent. of whom can read and write-the spreading of disease stopped, habits of sobriety, morality, and industry encouraged, the Act of 1877 must be amended on the lines I have laid down in the Amending Bill, and described in my works and in my evidence before the select committee on canals last year-a Bill which has been before Parliament during the last three sessions.

Last year the Bill was read a second time, and referred to the Select Committee on Canals, and they reported it back to the House of Commons without amendment. As the Bill now stands it has been read a second time this year and referred to a select committee. Each year the Bill has been blocked' at the instance of the Canal Association, on the plea that it will interfere with canal traffic. This I deny most emphatically. The carrying out of the Act on the lines of the Amending Bill will give an impetus to canal traffic, and bring health and happiness to the toilers.

The failing points of the Act of 1877 are—1. The Act, to a great extent, is permissive. 2. Proceedings cannot be taken against boatmen and boat-owners for breaches of the regulations. 3. The Act is placed entirely in the hands of the local authorities, which are, as a rule, twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty miles apart. 4. The non-annual registration of the boats. 5. The want of power in the Act to enable the Local Government Board to appoint officers to supervise, control, enforce, and report to Parliament the working of the Act, and to visit the boats working between the registration districts. 6. The want of power to enter the boats at reasonable times to inspect them. 7. The want of power to give the education officers power to enter a boat cabin to see to the education of the children. 8. The payment of a week's fees demanded from boat children who can only attend one or two days in the week. 9. Many boats, in coal and other districts, escape registration and inspection on the plea that the boats are not used as dwellings. 10. The fines, instead of being paid to the county fund, should be paid to those who institute proceedings and do the work. II. There is no provision made in the Act or in the regulations for the transfer of boats by sale or otherwise. My Bill remedies these faulty places.

Clause I provides for the annual registration of the boats, upon which the success or non-success of the Act of 1877 and the Bill I am promoting depends, and I propose at a cost of not more than five shillings. At any rate, if the boats are not registered annually they must be registered every time a change takes place in the captains or masters, which would be a troublesome and an expensive affair, owing to the frequent changes taking place, often several times during the year. Nor would it be wise and practical to put a canal boat and her cabin crew through the same forms, ceremonies, and difficulties that ships and ships' crews have to undergo every time a change of ownership and crew takes place.

The process I propose is both extremely simple and inexpensive, no matter in what part of the country the boat happens to be at the time of the annual renewal of the registration certificate. I will only take one case to illustrate my meaning upon this point. Suppose a boat is registered at Paddington in the first instance, but at the end of the year the boat is working on the canals near Birmingham. To compel the boat to be brought from Birmingham to Paddington for the renewal of the

registration certificate would be a great and unnecessary hardship inflicted upon boatmen and boat-owners. What the captain would have to do would be to ask the registration-officer at Birmingham to examine his boat, and, upon its being satisfactory, he would give the captain a note to that effect, which note the captain would send to the Paddington registration officer, upon which the officer would forward the proper certificate of renewal of registration.

Up to the present time the Local Government Board have had no power to enforce the carrying out of the Act of 1877. All they could do was to make regulations, which the Manchester and other authorities say, in effect, are not worth the paper they are printed upon. Clause 5 of the Amending Bill gives the Local Government Board and the Education Departments power to see that the Act of 1877 is properly carried out, and is as follows:

1. The Local Government Board and Education Department shall from time to time cause inquiries to be made as to the due observance of the enactments contained in the principal Act, and in the regulations made thereunder, with respect to the registration of canal boats, the education of children dwelling on board canal boats, and other matters relating to the execution of the principal Act and this Act.

2. Every inspector of the Local Government Board and Education Department shall, for the purpose of any inquiry under this Act, have in relation to witnesses and their examination, the production of papers and accounts, and inspection of places and matters required to be inspected, similar powers to those which poor law inspectors have under the Acts relating to the relief of the poor for the purposes of those Acts, and power to enter any canal boat at all reasonable times.

3. The Local Government Board and Education Department shall, as soon as practicable after the meeting of Parliament in every year, cause to be laid before both Houses of Parliament a report as to the proceedings of inspectors appointed under this Act, and generally as to the execution of the principal Act and this Act.

4. Such part of the fees paid in respect of registration under the principal Act and this Act as the Local Government Board from time to time direct, shall be applied towards the expenses of inquiry made under this Act.

Instead of the sanitary authorities doing the work, and finding the necessary money to enforce the provisions of the Act and the regulations of the Local Government Board, without any power over the fines, Clause 10 of the Bill is intended to put this matter right and reads as follows :

1. One half of any fine recovered under the principal Act or this Act shall go to the informer, and the remainder to the sanitary authority (as defined by the principal Act) of the district in which the offence is committed.

2. Provided that where the sanitary authority are the informers they shall be entitled to the whole of the fines recovered.

3. All sums payable to a sanitary authority under this section shall be paid over to their treasurer, and shall by him be carried over to the account of the fund applicable by the authority to the purposes of this Act.

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Clause I of the Canal Boats Act, 1877 (Amendment), Bill, deals with our gipsies, van, show, and other travelling children and their homes, and reads follows:- 'The expression "Canal Boats," "Canal Boat,” and “Boat,” in the principal Act and this Act, and also in the regulations of the Local Government Board and Education Department, shall include all travelling and temporary dwellings not rated for the relief of the poor.' It was stated to the Committee that vans and like places are not canal boats, to which I replied that the principles involved and objects sought are the same; and the same machinery from beginning to end would have to be brought into motion to carry out the plans I propose. It is only a question of the term used or name given. In one case a home moves upon water, and in the other case a home moves upon land.

A thousand things far wider of the mark and object are brought under various acts of Parliament. Take, for instance, the wide scope of our factory, mining, and educational laws, or hundreds of other Acts of Parliament that are placed upon the statutebook.

It is time our canal and canal-workers were put upon a satisfactory basis, and if the boatmen do not get sufficient money to make them comfortable homes on land, it is high time they did, and this can be done by lowering canal tolls, increasing canal traffic, making canals of greater depth and width, capable of carrying boats of from two to three

hundred tons burden-in the way I have indicated canal system under proper supervision and control, for many years-and the putting of the whole of the

as other industries are.

Prayers and sighs have gone to St. Stephen's from friends in all parts of the country-diocesan conferences, Birmingham, Manchester, London, and other school boards, borough corporations, and quarter sessions-in favour of the Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill. The Essex Quarter Sessions, composed of about 250 leading county gentlemen, including peers, lords, M.P.s, baronets, and squires, at the instance of Mr. Andrew Johnston and Mr. Pierce, passed a unanimous resolution in favour of the Bill, and with no further response from headquarters to their action and my long, long years of toil than 'Go thy way for this time, and when I have a more convenient season-session-I will send for thee.' Will it ever come? I begin to doubt it.

PENNY DINNERS FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN.-The Rev. W. Moore Ede, rector of Gateshead, has been trying the experiment of penny dinners for poor school children. The result of the first week's experiment was a profit of about seven shillings on nearly 500 dinners, and this, the rev. gentleman says, 'has not been obtained by placing the children on short allowance. They have had each day as much as they could eat; for, unlike Oliver Twist, they have been allowed to ask for more as often as they pleased. One boy was heard to boast that he had sent in his plate eight times, and five helps were common. Mr. Ede suggests that the system of penny dinners should be established in connection with all our National and Board Schools, or, at any rate, those in poor districts, and he affirms that the scheme will be absolutely self-supporting.

AT the last meeting of the Blaydon Local Board it was stated that there were a dozen cases of typhoid fever at Black Hall Mill, which arose from the deficient or polluted supply of water at that place. There was also a total absence of drainage.

THE COMMUNICABILITY OF

ENTERIC FEVER.

By ALEXANDER COLLIE, M.D.

[Having received the appended query from a subscriber, we submitted it for reply to Dr. Collie, who has kindly gone into this important question at such length that we deem it advisable to publish the information sent in an independent form.-Ed. S. R.]

Being Sanitary Inspector of a large district I write to ask your opinion upon the subject of typhoid fever. Is it communicable from person to person? The District Medical Officer of Health is of opinion that it is. Poor Law Medical Officer of great experience here is also of that opinion; but a young doctor recently established sneers at the above opinions as being those of old fogies' of the profession, and states that in London hospitalsSt. Bartholomew's, for instance-typhoid cases are habituaily treated in the same ward with other patients. May I also ask if the majority of the profession -so far as you are aware-agree with the old fogies' or with the young lights?—I am, Sir, your obedient servant, June 25, 1884.

M. S. E.

porter who bathed the male enteric patients. On Feb. 7, 1880, the smallpox hospital was closed for enteric fever and reopened for smallpox; and from that time to this there has been no enteric fever in the Homerton Smallpox Hospital (Gayton). The experience of the Homerton Fever Hospital is essentially the experience of the other fever hospitals. Thus, in the six years 1878-83 eight nurses and attendants contracted enteric fever in the London Fever Hospital; and during the same years seven nurses and attendants contracted enteric fever in the Homerton Fever Hospital. The Hampstead Hospital was opened for enteric and scarlet fever in October 1882. Very few cases, especially of enteric, were admitted until the autumn of 1883, when the wards were fairly full. Then three cases arose, two amongst nurses who were nursing enteric patients, and one in a housemaid who frequented an enteric ward. The experience of Deptford and Stockwell is similar. Whatever then be the explanation, the fact that attendants upon cases of enteric fever contract the disease is beyond dispute. The experience of the general hospitals is similar to that of the special hospitals of which the following is a striking example.

'The Committee regret to inform the Governors that during the latter part of the year seven nurses were laid up with typhoid fever, one of whom unfortunately died. Although the drains of the hospital had been carefully inspected so recently as last spring, the Committee considered it desirable to have them again thoroughly examined. This was done on two separate occasions, under the direction of Mr. Yuill, a member of the Committee, who has had great experience in such investigations, and Mr. Harvey, the architect, when powerful tests were applied to ascertain whether any defects existed; and the Governors will be glad to hear that nothing was found in the condition of the drains that could account for the illness of the nurses. All the nurses who were laid up with typhoid fever had been engaged in nursing typhoid cases; and this fact would seem to indicate that the opinion of the medical profession as to the non-infectiousness or non-conta

course of time, have to be reconsidered.'-Annual Report of Royal Free Hospital, 1883.

DR. BRISTOWE probably expresses the opinion of the profession on this question when he says 'It is admitted by most physicians that enteric fever is not in the usual sense of the term contagious; that it is not conveyed from one person to another person by the touch or by the breath; and that attendants on the sick rarely, if ever, take the disease from them; yet it is quite certain that the immigration of a patient suffering from enteric fever into an infected locality not unfrequently leads to an outbreak there.' The phrase 'the usual sense of the term contagious' is somewhat vague, and it would be well if the precise meaning of contagious' in the usual and the unusual sense of the term were definitely determined. There is also some contradiction in the statement that the disease is not contagious, and 'that the immigration of a patient suffering from enteric fever into an uninfected locality not unfrequently leads to an outbreak there.' Why, if it be not in some way contagious?giousness of typhoid fever may probably, in the Further, the statement 'that attendants on the sick rarely if ever take the disease' can no longer be maintained in the light of recent experience. Take the Homerton Fever Hospital as an example. It has been open as a fever hospital for about eleven years, and during that time about thirty persons contracted enteric fever, twenty-eight of whom were attendants upon the enteric sick one was a laundry woman, who collected soiled linen from enteric fever wards, and one was a nurse, the origin of whose case was doubtful. On this point the experience of the Homerton Smallpox Hospital is very curious. From Feb. 1, 1871, to Sept. 19, 1879, 6,771 cases of smallpox and 171 cases of scarlet fever had been treated there, and during the same time about 487 persons had been employed in attendance upon the sick and otherwise; but during all that time, a period of about nine years, no case of enteric fever had occurred among these 7,000 persons, a large number of whom, being young persons, were of the susceptible age. But on Sept. 29, 1879, the Homerton Smallpox Hospital was opened for enteric fever, and within six weeks there were two cases among the nurses who nursed it, followed by a third a little later, and by a fourth at the end of three months in the person of a

Dr. Donkin and Dr. Sharkey record, in the British Medical Journal of Nov. 6, 1880, similar experiences in respect of the Children's Hospital at Shadwell, and St. Thomas's, and in the same number Dr. McNeill describes an epidemic of enteric fever which was imported into Colonsay and spread apparently in no other way than from person to person. French opinion is not less decided. Thus Louis, after discussing the opinions of Leuret, Gendron, and Bretonneau, who all hold that enteric fever is contagious, concludes: 'It appears to me henceforth impossible, after what has preceded, to deny the contagious character of the typhoid affection even at Paris, for there can be no doubt of the nature of the disease observed by M. Bretonneau, M. Gendron, and those who share their opinions. The symptoms observed by them during life, and the lesions found after death, are the same as among the individuals attacked with the affection of which we are speaking, "et comment admettre que la même maladie soit contagieuse à Tours et à Châteaudu-Loir, et ne le soit pas à Paris?" Trousseau writes to the same effect :-"A consideration of the reports which the Academy receives every

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