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33
ing a higher class than the infants. In 6 of the deaths (22 per cent)
the first case in the family was not attending school. These facts
illustrate with considerable clearness one of the dangers resulting
from the admission of very young children to the risks inseparable
from school attendance.
But these risks, in the case of measles, are not confined solely to
a possible fatal issue from the disease; they also include many
distressing sequels among the survivors that have seldom come under
the notice of public health departments in the past, but which are
now beginning to receive from education committees more of that
attention which has been so long necessary. Such conditions as
deafness, defective vision, underdevelopment, both physical and
mental, are too often traceable to a neglected or severe attack of
measles, and a disease capable of affecting so banefully the health
of children and their future usefulness is certainly one that demands
every care and attention on the part of parents and educational
authorities alike.
Whooping Cough was the cause of 30 deaths, as compared
with 7, 3 and 20 in the three preceding years. This is equal to a
death rate from the disease of 0.54 per 1,000. All the deaths
occurred in children under 5 years of age, but unlike what has been
experienced in the case of measles, the greatest mortality occurred
in the first age period (0 to 1 year) in which 16 deaths took place,
the remaining 14 having fallen in the second age group (1 to 5 years).
This incidence of mortality is in accordance with the general
experience in whooping cough, and in so far as mortality may be
taken as an indication of general incidence, it would seem to place
the prevalence of this disease in a somewhat less close relation to
school influence than is the case with measles. The following
table shows that this relation is, nevertheless, a very definite
one:—