Dr. W. Ogle's report to the Local Government Board on the prevalence of diphtheria in the Llandausaint and the Holyhead registration sub-districts of the Holyhead union ; and on a recent outbreak of small-pox in the town of Holyhead.

  • Ogle, W.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Dr. W. Ogle's report to the Local Government Board on the prevalence of diphtheria in the Llandausaint and the Holyhead registration sub-districts of the Holyhead union ; and on a recent outbreak of small-pox in the town of Holyhead. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    5 li £ o Place or Street. Sex. Age. School. Approximate Date. Result. Remarks. 23 Porthypost - Boy 4 None May Recovered A house outside town, in fields, far from any other Boy 2 None May Recovered. Boy r> None May Recovered. dwelling, but with frequent communication with Kings- land, to which suburb it is nearest. 24 Trevenga Boy 8 Brifish .Tune 8 Died June 16 - An isolated house outside Girl 10 British June 16 Convalescent. town, in fields, on side away Mother p — June 17 Still ill. from Kingsland. The boy attended school up to May 30. Death registered as diphtheria. Diphtheria in Llanddausaint Sub-district. Llanddausaint sub-district is that part of West Anglesea that lies immediately opposite to Holyhead island. It consists of a number of small scattered villages and numerous interspersed and isolated farmhouses. The district is a low-lying tract of slightly undulating ground, with much bog in the depressions. It is much exposed to wind; the rainfall is heavy; and at the time of the late outbreak there was a pre- valence of bitter cold weather. The difficulty of obtaining information was even greater in this sub-district than at Holyhead; for to the obstacles which lay in the way in that case were added the facts that the houses in which diphtheria was known to have occurred were scattered over a very wide area, and that the persons from and concerning whom information was to be obtained could not, as a rule, speak English. I heard altogether of 23 houses that had been attacked by the disease ; and these, with one or two exceptions, were visited by me. They may be conveniently divided into two groups, there having been apparently two different centres for the outbreak. In the one group are the houses at and about Valley, which is the village nearest to Holyhead, and in most direct communication with it, being the next station on the railway. In the other group are the houses in the northern part of the sub-district, of which Llanddausaint may be roughly said be to be the centre. In neither part of the sub-district could I hear of any case previous to the month of December 1878; that is to say, until long after the outbreak had begun in the town of Holyhead. So that if, as one would naturally conjecture, the two outbreaks, that in the town and that in the rural district, were connected with each other, it would seem that the infection had spread from town to country, rather than in the contrary direction. And this view is supported by the fact that as regards the Valley part of the sub-district, the earliest cases of which I could get information were at the nearest point to Holyhead, namely, at the bridge which connects that island with Anglesea ; the next cases being also in the interval between Holyhead and Valley, but some- what nearer the latter ; and the disease having appeared only after this at Valley itself. In all, so far as my information reached, 11 houses were affected in the Valley part of the sub-district. These houses were all, with one exception, where two were contiguous dwellings, separated from each other by considerable intervals. They had neither milk, water, nor sewerage in common, nor other traceable direct connexion with each other. They did not frequent the same place of worship, the 11 houses going between them to six different chapels or churches. As regards school attendance the facts appeared to be as follows :—In three of the 11 families the first person attacked was an adult; in the remaining eight the first case was a child of school age. In one of these the child was not at any school, but was probably infected by a child living close by, and ill a few days before it. In six, the first case was a child at the Caerpwll school; and in one, a child at one of the two other smaller schools in the district. The Caerpwll school is the one to which by far the largest number of children go in this district; so that the fact that in six families the first case was a child from this school is not any very strong ground for supposing this school to have been concerned in the dissemination of the infection. Still the fact remains that in a large proportion of the cases there was this possible and not unlikely channel by which infection may have been transferred from one person to another.