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To the Urban District Council of Egremont
GENTLEMEN,
I have much pleasure in presenting my Annual
Report for the year 1905. In niv report for the year 1904
I remarked that we had not been visited by any epidemic of
a severe nature. The year 1905 has been in marked contrast
in that respect, as during it, we have had a sharp
epidemic of Measles, a considerable amount of Scarlatina
and Whooping Cough, and infection more or less all the
year round. The history of infectious disease is the history
of childhood and youth, as the liability to infection is exceedingly
slight after having passed these periods. The
inter-communication and co-mingling of children and young
people at schools, churches and chapels, and in the daily and
ordinary vocations of life are such as to render it impossible
to escape infection. As soon as a generation of children
spring up who are not immune by having previously had the
disease, they fall a prey to one or other of the exanthemata.
Not only do we see that this is so, but we can predict with
great accuracy whether a certain disease on making its appearance
is likely to spread and become epidemic, by noting
the period of time we have been exempt from it, and whether
it has been long enough to allow the production of susceptible
individuals in sufficient numbers. This is specially true with
regard to Measles, which is—if I may use the term —a very
honest and straightforward kind of infectious disease, and
rarely falsifies your predictions in regard to it. If it appears
in a place and 4 or 5 years have passed in which no cases
have occurred, it is sure to spread, and very few indeed will
escape it. It was thus in the epidemic from which we