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16
excluded from school, and thus epidemics could be prevented from occurring
in schools, and at the same time the necessity for interfering with the work
of schools would be reduced to a minimum.
Hospital accommodation should be provided especially for those patients
who cannot be properly isolated at home.
The rooms and infected articles could then be disinfected and further
spread of the disease arrested.
Disinfection is carried out in those houses in which the existence of
measles has come to our knowledge (by the death returns or otherwise), but
this generally cannot be done until after the death or convalescence of the
children.
WHOOPING COUGH.
This, also, is not notified. It was the cause of 8 deaths. In 1894 there
were 22 deaths.
In London there were 1483 deaths from this disease, corresponding to a
rate of 0 34 per 1000 living. This is the lowest rate on record, the nearest
approach to so low a rate having been 041 in 1883, after an epidemic in the
previous year, when the rate was as high as i'2i per 1000 living.
Disinfection is carried out when practicable in those cases that come to
our knowledge.
DIARRHCEA.
This was the cause of 24 deaths in this district. In London it was the
cause of 3600 deaths, or at a rate of 0.83 per 1000 living. This rate was 0.15
above the average of the preceding ten years, and was higher than in any year
since 1887. There were also 1487 deaths from enteritis.
2655, or 74 per cent, of the deaths from diarrhoea, took place in the third
or summer quarter of the year. The great majority of these are hand-fed
children under one year of age, living in insanitary dwellings on a polluted
soil, which during the hot summer months gets heated to the requisite temperature.
It has been found experimentally that there is always a sudden
rise in the mortality from diarrhoea when the soil at a depth of four feet from
the surface attains the temperature of 56° F.