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training has not been such that they can appreciate the enormous importance of keeping infectious
and convalescent children out of school without penalising teachers and school authorities. The
value of the regulation is so great that efforts should be continued to have it re-enacted.
" 1906. p. 30." When a question arises in matters of infection it is always best to adopt the
safest course and exclude the child, but such a course penalises the teacher by reducing the attendance,
and it is on attendance that grading and salary depend. Whether the school is closed for
epidemics, or whether the attendance is reduced by illness, not only have the local Education
authorities to suffer indirectly through the illness, but they have rightly to continue to pay
teachers' salaries and school expenses. It is therefore unjust that the share of these expenses in
the Imperial grant formerly paid under Article 101* of the old Codes, should have been withdrawn.
Apart from this failure to contribute the just share of the cost of the school, which came roughly
to some 2 per cent. of the grants, it is a premium on a teacher to act in doubtful cases against
SCARLET FEVER.
Diagram XII.
the public interest, and indirectly the step forward in the bacteriological selection of carrier cases
suspected of diphtheria will cause increased cost through loss of attendance grant.
The time has now come with the progress of knowledge, especially in the last four years, to
re-open this question, and to press on the Board of Education the necessity of allowing the epidemic
grant as a national insurance against the school diffusion of disease, and a means of allowing sufficient
prolongation of the convalescent period where children have been suffering from zymotic diseases."
Time accentuates these remarks, but still the blot remains which has blacked out this valuable
provision, the grant against disease.
SCARLET FEVER.
The mildness of many cases of scarlatina and the considerable proportion of apparently immune
individuals make the study of scarlatinal diffusion very difficult. School infection must play a part,
and it is justifiable to take measures based on the assumption that the statistical proof of school