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to the provisions of the Newcastle-on-Tyne Improvement Act,.
1882.
Dr. Armstrong considers that an experience of two
years has been amply sufficient to form a decided opinion on
the working of the system. The measures taken appear, so
far as I can make out, to be practically the same that we take
after an outbreak of disease such as scarlet fever, and in
addition that in December, 1896, all the elementary schools
in the city were closed for four weeks, that all other day
schools and Sunday schools in the city were also closed in the
same manner, and that a large number of schools were disinfected,
after November 13th, 1897, but not closed.
The practical result of the notification seem, in the
opinion of the Medical Officer, to be disappointing, although
he says some good has undoubtedly followed the notification of
measles, and he particularly points out that the most important
point seems to be to promptly close every school in which the
disease appears. In his concluding remarks he points out that
"whatever conclusion the sanitary authority may come to as
to the advisability of renewing the notification of this disease
with the object of dealing with it more thoroughly, if more
heroically, than heretofore, through the agency of school
closure, there can scarcely be two opinions as to the undesirability
of continuing it on the old lines."
In the face of this report it is indeed difficult to say how
the proposals of the London County Council and of the London
School Board would be of service, for if the whole machinery
of notification has been powerless to do much good, how much
less will the partial application of certain provisions of the Act
have any effect.
This report of Dr. Armstrong, which is based on experimental
evidence bears out the expression of opinion that I have
made that if the Act is applied at all it should be applied in its
entirety, but at the same time I still must express my opinion
that measles is not a disease in which notification would be
advantageous.
It has also been urged that the inclusion of measles
under the Notification Section would tend to raise the estimation
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