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Whooping Cough. There were 378 cases of Whooping
Cough notified during the year with no deaths from this disease.
This compares with 232 for last year and 238 for the year before.
With Diphtheria now under control, preventively as well as
curatively, Measles and Scarlet Fever having assumed mild
characteristics and their complications, when they occur, amenable
to treatment by Penicillin and the sulpha drugs, as indeed are the
other rarer but more formidable childish infections, Whooping
Cough has stepped into the forefront as the enemy of children.
Although its fatility rate is not perhaps so high, its capacity
for damage is serious and it is a distressing ordeal for parents
to witness in their child. That is no doubt why, even though no
guarantee can be offered of successful protection with any present
immunising agent, there is still a large demand among the parents
for injections against Whooping Cough. The problem has two
aspects, firstly, as a public health measure, we feel that we ought
to have sound evidence of its efficacy before recommending its
use on the scale we should desire and, secondly, the parents'
point of view which might be expressed as "I don't care whether
it is only a one in a thousand chance of protection, I will leave
nothing undone to prevent my child contracting Whooping
Cough". That is a powerful argument which surely must justify
our making such provision which, incidentally, we do. In the
meantime we eagerly await the result of the vaccine trials which
are taking place. Apparently the low incidence of Whooping
Cough as soon as the trials began have delayed the publication
of the reports. Meanwhile, in another way, hope for relief has
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