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35
THE SPREAD OF INFECTION IN SCHOOLS.
There has been abundant evidence during the year, of the
powerful influence which school attendance exerts upon the spread of
the infectious diseases, Diphtheria, Scarlet Fever, Measles and
Whopping Cough; and one school had to be temporarily closed, on
account of a school outbreak of Diphtheria. Under a system of
compulsory school attendance it is only fair to the children—the
parents of whom have. long since grown to regard the period of school
attendance as one fraught with grave risks to the health of their
children—that every available measure should be adopted by the
School Authorities to reduce the large amount of preventable disease,
which is now the outcome of our present system and methods. The
preventive measures adopted are wholly insufficient; they are almost
useless in preventing the spread of communicable disease; and hence
school closure has to be adopted after a large number of children are
down with the disease. The opposition to the closure of a London
Board School is so great that it is only when one is able to point to a
much reduced attendance of the scholars, on account of the spread of
preventable disease in their midst, that the necessary step is taken.
Education is the first consideration, and the health of the scholars is
treated as of quite secondary importance.
The one obvious measure which most of us Medical Officers of
Health have advocated for many years is a system of Medical Inspec
tion of the scholars at regular and frequent intervals; and Germany
has, of course, adopted it. In that country the school doctor has now
been appointed in considerable numbers. He has nothing at all to
do with treatment, he only decides as to the total or partial exemption
-of children from school attendance on the score of health. To give
one instance of the value of such an appointment, as the result of the
examination of two schools in Leipzig, there were found two children
suffering from consumption, 11 from heart disease, 10 from spinal
curvature, 63 from obstructive growths in the nose and throat, which
lead to defects of speech &c., 75 with defects of vision, and 10 with
defects of hearing.