MUST COME SOUTH.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 25, 30 September 1913, Page 7

MUST COME SOUTH.

DOCTOR’S ALARMING VIEW. Although recent reports from Auckland have indicated that smallpox is be iiigf stamped out in the far North, the warning note sounded by Dr. Fenwick at the last meeting of the Christchurch Hospital Board last week made it appear that the Dominion is not' yet “out of the wo'ckl.” “We shall have ’smallpox here shortly,” he declared, ih the course of the discussion oh the proposal by the'Public Health Committee to 1 expend £2BOO bn extensions to, 'Arid' alterations of, 1 the Bottle Lake Isolation Hospital. He averted that smalljiox must drift dowri Herd ‘Whin A'cWtdih’ and it 1 wbtild' Tie absoWihiy hhcesSkfy '■ >to havd a 1 proper plade td s put tIW basest , -Wk&isSP by, 1)r; ‘ Fenwick* reiterated* his 'statement that smallpox must inevitably come to the South Island sooner or later. When the reporter -suggested that the latest reports ’ fifotof ‘ ! Artcklhnd ,| irldicated that the disease had been got under mntrol and was being stamped out here, Dro ; Fenwick Said, emphatically, “YoirtcaiPt staWip'lt out so. easily ae: Ante Pfirmly belike that it Will iconic :1b wii litre 1 in the'nfear future. 1 ’ ij In explanation of 1 1 his- remarks, Dr. Fenwick said that the Auckland Exfihition f iwbuld be opening: within a ’ow months, and there would be a ai'ge numhei" of visitors from Christ■htlrch and other parts of the South island to the Northern city. Hundreds >f the Southern people would be crowd’d into the hotels and boardinghouses if Auckland, and would he living in lose contact with, and mixing with, he inhabitants of that city, and with leopie from the infected parts of the Auckland province. There would be Maoris from districts .where smallpox bad been rife, and there would *be vhite people who had been in those districts also, and with the crowding of hotels and boardinghouses during the Exhibition period there was. a very grave- danger of people returning South, bringing smallpox germs vHth them into Christchurch.

“About ten years ago the plague came from Mauritius to Durban while I was in the latter place,” said Dr. Fenwick. “A coloured boy from Mauritius landed in the South African port, and he had to submit to fumigation of his clothes. Three months later he took a suit of clothes From his box to wear in place of his aid suit. The-'plague started in Durban almost right away, and the outbreak was traceable to infection in the boy’s new suit. Smallpox is even more virulent than the plague, and there is a very grave danger that it may be introduced from Auckland to Christchurch in precisely the same manner that I have described. Dr. Fenwick said lie felt very strongly on the matter, and he maintained that Dr. Duncan’s suggestions should be attended to without delay. There was very great need for the now isolation hospital at Bottle Lake to he completed in the near future. “While we are spending such a frightful lot of money on buildings at the Public Hospital,” said Dr. F.envyck, “why should we not spend the comparatively very modest sum on the Bottle Lake Isolation Hospital, and so be prepared for any emergency.”

Dr. Fenwick added that probably one hundred medical men from the South Island, together with their families would be going to Auckland where the Australasian Med : cal Congress was to be held. Besides these there would be hundreds of other people going up, and the congestion ,which would necessarily result in in that city made the danger of southern visitors bringing hack smallpox a verv real one.