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reply might reasonably be justified. As it stands, however, the action taken may
have a contrary effect. It may affect the consideration that the public have for
the other infectious diseases, and induce them to treat the conditions relating to
disinfection and isolation of the other diseases with the same contempt that they
now affect for Measles. After having had a few months' experience of the sections
in question, I am still of opinion that they are useless. I do not consider that
the sections will be of any use unless Measles is put on exactly the same footing as
the Notifiable Diseases.
To make Measles a notifiable disease in the usual way would be expensive, and
it is questionable whether the expenditure would be justified. It is true that it
has been tried in many of the large provincial towns, but the conditions are
somewhat different. In all the places where the experiment has been made,
a certain number only of the patients were removed to the Fever Hospitals.
During the height of the epidemic the hospital accommodation was found to be
inadequate in all such towns. In London, however, there are no beds set apart in
any of the Fever Hospitals for the accommodation of Measles.
If the Metropolitan Asylums Board supplied sufficient hospitals for Measles
on the same basis as they have provided for the other notifiable diseases, the expense
would be enormous. In addition to this, the costs incurred in the payment of notification
fees would be more than double what they are now, and in this connection
it would have to be remembered that the other sanitary work would be interfered
with, owing to the time of the inspectors being taken up during the occurrence of
an epidemic. Even were it possible to remove the patients to the hospital, one
would never expect in Measles to have the same good results as in the other infectious
diseases. The children that contract Measles are generally younger than
those who suffer from Scarlet Fever. Most of the deaths last year were children
under two years of age, and nearly one-half were infants under one year of age.
The objections to removing to Fever Hospital babies under a twelve-month old are
obvious. Besides, the disease is infectious long before the rash appears, and days
before the disease can be diagnosed with any certainty.
Removal to hospital being out of the question, can nothing be done to have the
patient isolated at home?
In this Borough during 1903 it was found necessary to remove to the Fever
Hospitals 87 per cent, of the Diphtheria cases, and 88 per cent. of the Scarlet Fever
cases, due to the fact that it was impossible to have them isolated at home. It
would therefore be necessary to remove an equivalent percentage of children suffering
from Measles if strict isolation would be enforced.
With the exception of Diarrhoea there were more deaths from Measles in our
Borough last year than any other Zymotic disease. In fact, there were more deaths
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