The Warminster & West Wilts Herald, Saturday 16th February 1889, included the MEDICAL OFFICER’S ANNUAL REPORT:
The Medical Officer (Mr. F.I. Flower) presented his annual report as follows:
“It is again my duty to present to you my annual report as to the health and sanitary condition of the town during the past year.”
“My information as to the existing sanitary condition and its future wants has been obtained by a systematic inspection of the various parts of the town, particularly of those inhabited by the poorer classes of the community, and where infectious cases have existed, and I think these visits have been effectual in preventing the spread of disease and have also been the means of discovering and having many sanitary defects made good.”
“During the year the number of deaths registered for the entire town was 98 (one in excess of last year). From these must be deducted 16 deaths of persons dying in the Workhouse and Cottage Hospital not belonging to Warminster; this will leave 82 deaths due to the town, which, calculating on a population of 5,640 persons, will give a death rate of 14.7 per thousand. Six deaths were recorded from zymotic diseases, viz. two from measles and four from scarlet fever.”
“The births numbered 146, giving a birth rate of 25.8.”
“The deaths of children under one year, including premature births, numbered 11.”
“The following figures epitomise the ages at which deaths occurred throughout the town:
Under one year of age, 11;
Over one and under five, 4;
Over five and under fifteen, 4;
Over fifteen and under twenty-five, 6;
Over twenty-five and under sixty, 23;
Over sixty and under eighty, 37;
Over eighty years of age, 13;
Total 98.”
“I will now refer briefly to the presence of the different forms of zymotic diseases during the year.”
“Diphtheria: Only one case, and that an imported one, has occurred in the town.”
“Measles and Whooping Cough: Both these diseases existed to some extent, the former especially, and proved fatal in two cases.”
“Small-pox and Enteric Fever: No cases of these diseases have been reported to me, but two cases of choleraic diarrhoea occurred in adjacent houses at Boreham, one of which proved fatal.”
“Scarlet fever was prevalent during the early parts of the year, and an outbreak occurred at the Reformatory School in March, resulting in the death of two of the inmates; later on in the year two other inmates were attacked. The town now seems freer from this disease than it has been for the last three or four years, as with the exception of the imported case, which infected the other, no new cases have been reported to me since August. A prosecution resulted from the latter case, on account of the mother of an infected child allowing the boy to return to school before he was sufficiently recovered.”
“During the year I have analysed eight samples of water; the results were that in one case the water was classed as good, in one suspicious, and in six cases impure and dangerous to use for drinking. It does not necessarily follow that all impure waters are equally dangerous to health; the most dangerous condition of contamination is where the water is tainted by the produce of human excrement, but it is erroneous to think that the daily use of such water usually produces fever or defind serious illness – such a consequence is the exception – but its daily use will possibly lower the tone of the constitution and occasion, in a few, various obscure and chronic disease, and there is also the danger that the germ of enteric fever or other diseases may at any time find an entrance into the well.”
“More attention has been paid to preventing the disagreeable emanations from the manholes during the summer months by the free use of disinfectants and regular flushing, but there are still great complaints, which nothing will rectify but extra ventilation by shafts, which I hope to see eventually carried out.”