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attendance. This special liability also dates from the time when
increased activity in enforcing attendance at Elementary Schools
was brought into play (i.e., about 1871) by the operation of the
Elementary Education Act. Dr. Thorne Thorne and Mr.
Power, have also, prior to Mr Murphy's Report, demonstrated
the influence that school attendance exercises upon the diffusion
of diphtheria epidemics.
It seems to me that the dangers of school attendance when
Diphtheria is present in the district can only be faced by the
adoption of several expedients, and certainly no impediment
should be put in the way of securing the maximum benefits of
compulsory education. In future when a Diphtheria outbreak
threatens the district I intend to take the following steps:—
(a.) To notify to the teachers all cases of infection in
houses from which any child attends their school and to request
that such children shall be prohibited from attending school
unless it is certified by a medical man that there is no risk of
infection.
(b.) To ask the co-operation of teachers in the early
detection of slight cases of sore throat among children attending
the school—such cases to be excluded unless certified by a
medical man as free from infection.
(c.) Since the inspection of the scholar's throats can only be
satisfactorily performed by a medical man, I shall endeavour
at least once a week to gain permission to make such examination
myself in respect of the public schools, and shall recommend
that a medical practitioner be asked to do so in the case of
private schools.
Undoubtedly in the light of our present knowledge of
Diphtheria infection it is necessary to treat every case of sore
throat as potentially infectious—nor do I consider that even a
bacteriological examination, when this furnishes negative
testimony—will warrant one in regarding the case as harmless to
others. I have, during the year in question, examined the
exudation of a severe sore throat (acute follicular tonsillitis) and
found no evidence whatever of the germ of Diphtheria (the