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59
and because in these days they have to find some
excuse for not sending their children to school,
seize upon the convenient fiction that their own
children are suffering from whooping cough, which,
of course, still further makes statistics difficult to
interpret.
Beyond this I find that during the year
1943, 30 per cent., of all our notifications of
whooping cough came from one general medical
practitioner, and that 56 per cent. came from four
medical practitioners.
My deduction from this is that there is even
amongst medical men a wide variation in the clinical
evidence on which they are prepared to make a diagnosis
of whooping cough.
It would appear, therefore, that the time has come
when notification of whooping cough should be made
much more standard than it is today.
(9) MEASLES.
The incidence of this disease showed some decrease—797
notifications were received, whereas in
1942 there were 1,260.