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For the closing half of the Woolwich district and the rest of London, the following card has
been printed, and it is hoped to limit the disease by giving a card to each non-protected child when measles
has appeared, urging the parents to be watchful, and to keep their children at home on the slightest
symptoms of the premonitory catarrh being noticed. It is clearly right that the authorities, who alone
can gain the earliest information, should at once inform the parents of children likely to be attacked,
which this card serves to do.
[M.O. 19.] LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL.
Notice to
The Parent or Guardian
of
From
The Head Teacher
(Infants' Dept.)
School.
As a case of measles has occurred among the
scholars in the class which your child attends, it has
been decided to close the class till
Measles is an infectious disease. You are therefore
cautioned, in the event of your child showing any
signs of this disease, to keep from contact
with other children or from exposure in public places
until a fortnight shall have elapsed after exposure to
infection. A child who appears only to have a slight
cold may have contracted measles and be dangerous
to others. Any child who has contracted measles
must not resume school attendance for one month.
Date
Signature.
VISION.
The acuity and other visual conditions have been treated in some detail in previous reports
Attention has also been paid to the prevalence of trachoma and other contagious conditions. At
present nothing further is to be added.
It is noticeable how much trivial conditions of a temporary nature affect the vision. In suburban
schools where cleanliness is attended to, and recurrent external eye diseases, corneal ulcerations,
phlyctenulae, blepharitis, and other conditions are infrequent, a very high percentage of good vision is
attained-
Similar conditions hold in isolated country schools where there is a comparative absence of the
numerous sources of germs of low contagious power, which readily attack the debilitated children in
densely populated centres, or living in small and overcrowded rooms.
The selection of children with defective acuity having been made, and cards of warning sent
home, in a few cases the teachers make it their business to follow this up, but in the majority of cases
the facts are merely registered and no further action taken. Even when the teachers are anxious they
have to contend with much. Parents dispute the fact of bad vision, or are indifferent, or make many
excuses for delay. The mother cannot afford time for hospital. She goes to work, or there are too many
at hospital and some get put off. They fear the glasses will break, the girls especially have a prejudice
against glasses, or the father is out of work or too poor to pay for glasses. Sometimes glasses are obtained
and not worn, especially in cases of hypermetropia, where improvement is not at once manifest;
generally, if broken, the parents will not replace them, but the great fact is that when their children have
been to hospital and have had glasses prescribed, many people are too poor to pay for them, reasons such
as the following being given: "Father out of work two years, glasses 7s. 6d." "Widow loses a day's
work whenever girl goes to hospital, child now ordered glasses, 7s. 6d." "Husband earns 27s. a week, rent
is 8s., eight children and one ordered glasses which will cost 7s. 6d." "The woman has five children.
The two boys have broken their glasses, which cost 7s. 6d. each. Her husband has £1 a week, and she
earns 5s.," and so on.
Spectacles from Hospital.—Again, cases are frequently seen of ridiculous corrections by bifocal
lenses, and of children being made to wear spectacles quite unnecessarily. As, for instance, a boy, aged
14, was prescribed bifocal spectacles which cost fifteen shillings. The glasses to be worn constantly
were upper parts for distance R and L plane, lower parts for near R and L + l.0D spherical. But this
boy could have been spared the constant wearing of glasses by presciibing R and L + l.0D spherical
for near work only, and these could have been got anywhere for a half-crown. Another case seen in the
same week was a deaf girl of 11, who had extensive and old scarring of a permanent nature in both
corneas. Recently she had been prescribed bifocals, which cost fifteen shillings. They corresponded
with what could be made out of the movements of the shadow test, concave glasses for the right eye
and convex for the left, but vision was only 360 with or without the spectacles, and she might have been
spared buying such expensive and useless glasses, of which indeed she looked over the top. Another
boy seen a few days later wearing concave sphero-cylinders of between —2.0 and —3. OD had to be
told that they were likely to be harmful. They had been prescribed two years previously after three
visits to the same ophthalmic out-patient room as the two previous cases. He made three more visits
and this time returned, wearing convex lenses.