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125
MEASLES.
It is most important to protect the young; child from
preventible disease, and to guard its physique during the
crucial years of rapid development; and the exposure to cold and
damp involved in school attendance through the winter months
must be the cause of a great deal of unnecessary sickness amongst
these infants.
If, in addition to the exclusion of children under 5 years of
age from elementary schools, all parents could be impressed with
the advantage of making efforts to protect their offspring from
Measles for as long as possible, and to regard the disease as
one which demands an anxious care to keep the child warm and
protected from chills for several weeks after the rash has
disappeared, I am confident that the death-rate from Measles
would be very considerably reduced.
Now that some Hospital provision has been made available
by the Metropolitan Asylums Board in respect to cases of
Measles and Whooping Cough, the question as to whether these
two diseases should be made compulsorily notifiable calls for further
consideration. Seeing that the extent of this accommodation
is very limited, and, therefore, soon becomes exhausted, as was
evidenced in November of last year, I am disposed to believe that
the prompt visitation of as many as possible of the cases which
come to our knowledge from the Education Authority and other
sources, and the home visitation and distribution of handbills of
advice in those streets occupied by the poorer classes, may furnish
as good results as compulsory notification, under the present circumstances.
It is proposed to append to our present handbills a
statement to the effect that a limited amount of hospital accommodation
is available for the most necessitous cases, and to invite
applications at the Town Hall.
PUERPERAL FEVER.
Under Puerperal Fever are included the deaths from Pyaæmia