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24
1920
(b) Proceedings under the Public Health Acts.
1. Number of dwelling houses in respect of which
Notices were served requiring defects to be
remedied 961
2. Number of dwelling houses in which defects were
remedied:—
(a) By Owners 666
(b) By Local Authority in default of Owners 295
(c) Proceedings under Section 17 and 18 of the Housing,
Town Planning, etc., Act, 1909.
1. Number of representations made with a view to
the making of Closing Orders Nil.
2. Number of dwelling houses in respect of which
Closing Orders were made Nil.
3. Number of dwelling houses in respect of which
Closing Orders were determined, the dwelling houses
having been rendered fit 3
4. Number of dwelling houses in respect of which
molition Orders were made Nil.
5. Number of dwelling houses demolished in
suance of Demolition Orders Nil.
Measles.
Few questions confront Medical Officers of Health more
regularly or more persistently than the control of Measles; and,
I might add, that on no other subject is there such a lack of uniformity
displayed in the measures adopted to deal with it.
There is a seasonal periodicity of measles, and in large centres
of population epidemics of measles occur with almost mathematical
regularity every second year. It might be assumed that the
seasonal and biennial periodicities of measles would be of value
in that they enable a sanitary authority to be prepared for an
epidemic outbreak of measles, but there is no situation which appears
so hopeless to the Medical Officer of Health of an Urban Area
as that in which he is face to face with an epidemic of measles on
a large scale. Some authorities assert that the control of measles
is non-existent. Until a vaccine has been discovered it would
seem that measles must play its time-honoured role and visit
in continually recurring epidemics the successive generations of
men, who in this natural but sacrificial manner, acquire the protective
immunity which enables the greater mass of the population
to withstand the otherwise ever present presage of a pandemic
disease.
As a natural corollary of this fatalistic non-possumus
attitude, we have some authorities who doubt, not only the pos-