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the expense and inconvenience the people may be put to, by having the rooms disinfected.
In most cases the entire house requires fumigating if the process is going
to be of any service at all, as by the time the information has reached the sanitary
authority the child is frequently convalescent and has been wandering about in every
room.
During an epidemic, when perhaps the school would be closed, and during a
vacation, we would be without even this scanty information. Moreover, this system
of communicating the fact that children are absent from, school, through illness, is
confined to Board Schools, and does not apply to voluntary and private schools.
Furthermore, Section 70 prohibits the conveyance of infected persons in public
conveyances. The person responsible is liable to a fine of £10, and the driver is
further liable to a penalty of £5, if this section be contravened. Suppose a child
is brought to a hospital from a distance, and a doctor at that institution diagnoses
measles? How is that child to be taken home again? The hospital authorities will
not take him into the hospital if they can possibly help it, as it is not a suitable
case to be taken into the wards. At the time the Order came into force the Metropolitan
Asylums Board would not remove him to his home. The officials of the
Asylums Board have often refused to remove cases to any place except to their own
hospitals. This question was raised by the East London Hospital for Children,
and as a result of their and our representation the Metropolitan Asylums Board
now consent to remove such cases to their own homes. I am afraid this is not
often done. If a child has Measles and the parents consider that he should be
seen by a doctor, in a large number of cases the doctor is not sent for, but for
economic reasons the child is taken to the surgery. If the sections are to be enforced,
the doctor must keep the patient isolated until he is removed home by one
of the Board's ambulances, and to have his consulting and waiting rooms disinfected.
Is this procedure carried out? I am afraid not. With respect to Small Pox,
Diphtheria and the other notifiable diseases it is carried out to the letter.
If Measles were made notifiable the parents would have more respect for the
disease, and instead of taking the patient to see the doctor, they would call the
doctor to visit the patient. They would not, as a general rule, run the risk of being
prosecuted for not supplying the necessary information to the Sanitary Authority.
Before the Local Government Board confirmed the Order of the London County
Council, the Stepney Borough Council strongly protested against it. The Local
Government Board's reply, however, was to the effect that the Board did not find
any sufficient reason for withholding their approval to the proposal, and that by
this step the public might be led to regard more seriously than they did in many
cases at present the dangers attaching to the infection of Measles. I grant that
if the sections relating to measles were made notifiable, the latter part of their