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1900] 106
informed of such exclusion, and before their re-admission a medical certificate
should be produced stating that the child is cured. Whenever such certificates
are not readily procurable, the teachers should exercise their discretion as to
admitting the children.
Children coming from houses in which ringworm or ophthalmia exist, but who
are not themselves suffering from the disease, should not be excluded from the
school.
(v.) If any children should show symptoms of any kind of infectious or contagious
disease not mentioned in the above regulations, or should be known to
come from a house where such an infectious disease exists, they must be excluded
from the school, and the head teacher must at once write to the head office for
instructions, and at the same time send a note of the case to the medical officer of
health, to the medical officer of the School Board for London, and to the divisional
superintendent.
(vi.) Whenever teachers communicate with the medical officer of health for
the district, relative to an outbreak of infectious disease in the schools, they must
at the same time communicate with the medical officer of the Board.
Symptoms of Infectious Diseases.
(vii.) Most of these maladies are attended by the appearance of a rash upon the
skin, but this eruption does not at once show itself. The child may ail for a day or
two first and the rash not make its appearance until later. But even before the
rash shows itself, there are usually certain symptoms present which should give
rise to suspicion on the part of the teacher, and these indicate the need for watchfulness
over the child.
Thus, a child sickening for an infectious disease usually complains, perhaps, of
headache, or perhaps of sore throat, and often the first symptom perceptible is a
shivering fit and occasionally sickness.
The more definite symptoms belonging to each disease will now be described,
but it must be recollected that all these symptoms are not always present at the
same time or even at all. The teacher, however, will be acting wisely in allowing
a child who is obviously ill to go home at once ; but the child must be sent home
under the charge of some responsible person, if an eruption upon the skin has made
its appearance when the child is found to be ill. (See section ii.)
The more common symptoms of the diseases to which attention should be
directed are:—
Scarlet Fever or Scarlatina.—The child feels ill, shivers, has a sore throat,
which is followed usually about twenty-four hours from the beginning of the illness
by the appearance of a scarlet rash on the chest, and which often extends over