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98
A fresh difficulty occurs when the father works at night and
sleeps at home during the day time. Under these circumstanoes,
all the children are kept in the living room so that the father may
rest. Sometimes the mother will explain that she cannot possibly
nurse the ailing child without the help of an older child who is
unprotected. ''The children must take their chance." In one
family the mother moved all the children who had not had measles
into the same room and to sleep in the same bed with the child
who had the disease. She explained that, "It was better to let
them get measles now, all of them together, and have done with
it. Measles was a child's complaint, and the sooner it was over
the better."
Mothers who go out to work, and put their children into
nurseries, still send their infants to a creche, even though they
know that others in the family have measles and that possibly the
babies may be sickening for the same disease.
The home nursing is primitive. It is popularly stated that the
rash takes 3 days to come out, stays out for 3 days, and "goes
inwardly" for 3 days. At the end of the ninth day the patient is
believed to be well and free from infection. Working mothers
then place these children, who are wrongly presumed to have
recovered, with neighbours to be taken care of. In this way infection
was carried into other families. In some of the households
affected, nurse children were found to be taken in during the day
time for payment.
During meal times the children and the patient were usually
all found to be feeding together. The patient's utensils were
mixed and washed in the common bowl with the utensils of others.
Some mothers when their children got measles were afraid to wash
or to undress them, and afraid to wash the floor lest the rash
should "strike inwardly" and give the patients pneumonia. Many
of the children were found up and about on the fourth day of
illness or soon after, sometimes clad only in a shirt or jersey, and
playing with other children in the passage.