ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 29 



thousand persons must have been attacked with scarlet fever in the 

 metropolitan district during the epidemic of 1893." These figures 

 it will be noticed, refer to the metropolitan district only, with 

 its population of four hundred and sixteen thousand three hun- 

 dred and seventy. If these same ratios are extended to the entire 

 colony, there have been thirty thousand cases of measles, and six 

 thousand cases of scarlet fever. The report goes on to say : — 

 " The suffering and misery caused by these two epidemics, happen- 

 ing as they did at the same time, cannot be estimated, and it is to 

 be regretted that, owing to the absence of an act for the compul- 

 sory notification and registration of infectious diseases, this Board 

 had not sufficient power to deal with the epidemics. There 

 can be no doubt that had some of the earlier cases been reported, 

 and proper means taken for their isolation, many lives might 

 have been saved." In the State of Michigan already referred 

 to and during the same period referred to, isolation and disin- 

 fection have saved thirteen thousand three hundred and sixty- 

 eight cases and six hundred and ninety lives from scarlet fever 

 alone. 



Typhoid Fever. — The present outbreak at Aberdeen is very 

 much to the point. The township had from six hundred to seven 

 hundred inhabitants, and up to date at least one hundred cases 

 have come under medical cognisance — and the outbreak is not 

 over yet. The sanitary condition of the place is most foul, and 

 that largely in a way that I will not particularise here. Suffice 

 it to say, that so long as no specifically infectious matters got 

 into the filth, which owing to the nature of the soil and the manner 

 in which it was deposited, remained on or near the surface and 

 was not destroyed as it would have been had it been properly 

 buried, and thanks to the delightful locality, the fresh air and 

 abundant sunlight, the people did fairly well in spite of their 

 dirty surroundings. But in November last a person, whose name 

 is known, brought the specific infection into the township, and im- 

 mediately, in such, to them, congenial circumstances, the organisms, 

 the bacilli, throve and multiplied, and the disease began to spread- 



