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18
epidemics there are becoming larger, the number of cases
in the five epidemics during those ten years having
increased from 2,791 to over 5,600, and this in spite of
the fact that in Edinburgh they are able to remove a
number of cases to hospital, a thing which we certainly
should not be able to do.
I have recently received information from the best
source, that no less than seven different Sanitary
Authorities in Lancashire, which had adopted notification
of Measles, have given it up, no advantage having
apparently accrued from it.
One of the Medical Inspectors of the Local Government
Board, Dr. Theodore Thomson, has investigated this
question and his Report has been issued. From this
Report it appears that as regards the 33 places visited by
him, compulsory notification of Measles was in force in
seven Urban and five Rural Districts at the times he
visited these districts, that in seven Urban and three
Rural Districts trial had in the past been made of
compulsory notification of Measles, but that this measure
had been revoked before he visited those Districts; and
that in the instance of one Urban District twice visited
by him, Measles, which was compulsorily notifiable on his
first visit, had ceased to be so before the date of his
second visit. Dr. Thomson's Report does not show that
satisfactory results have followed the compulsory notification
of Measles, either in reducing the number of cases
or in lowering the death-rate, but he endeavours to
account for this by stating that all the measures he
considers necessary as supplementary to compulsory
notification have not been thoroughly carried out in any
District that he has examined.
The reasons why compulsory notification of Measles
has failed wherever it has been tried, are, in the first
place, as already mentioned, the infectiousness of the