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104
Efforts are made by the Department to educate the parents
up to the dangerous nature of the disease, and the Sanitary
Staff visit the homes of the patients in the more crowded and
congested parts of the Borough in every case reported from
the schools or from other sources. Disinfection is carried
out in cases where it is required. Some good is effected
by these means, but much more requires to be done.
This will only be accomplished by teaching the younger generation
in the Public Elementary Schools the elementary principles
of hygiene, and a knowledge of the signs and symptoms
of the common infections. Elementary hygiene should form
part of the school curriculum, and the lessons thus learnt would
be found to form in after life a most useful safeguard against
outbreaks of epidemic diseases, which are so frequently spread
through ignorance of the dangerous nature of these diseases,
and neglect of the most elementary precautions to prevent their
spread.
No school or class room was closed in 1907 on account of
whooping cough.
The deaths in each of the four quarters of the year were
as follows:—
First quarter 12
Second quarter 23
Third quarter 15
Fourth quarter 12
Diarrhœa.
During the year 1907 the number of deaths from Diarrhoea
registered in the Borough of Battersea was exceptionally low.
Only 47 deaths were registered, as compared with 149 in 1906.
Seventeen of these deaths were registered as being due to
epidemic or zymotic enteritis. The death-rate was '25 per
1,000, or .56 below the decennial average, .81. The death-rate
in the County of London was .32. Of the 47 deaths, 45, or 95
per cent., were of children under five years of age, and 36, or