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A person was made liable to heavy penalties if he exposed infected clothing, or
allowed a person suffering from Measles whilst under his charge to be in a public place.
The prenvses must be disinfected when the patient had recovered from Measles,
and was presumably free from infection.
It was assumed by the County Council that information would be given to us
by the school authorities, as well as by the parents themselves ; but it will be seen
that the information was very incomplete, and, to some extent, unreliable.
I have dwelt only upon some of the aspects in the history and administrative
control of Measles in order to emphasize their bearing upon the action which the
Council took during the year. The particular points which I have endeavoured to
bring out are:—
(1) The large number of deaths caused by the disease.
(2) The difference in the incidence of attack to that of death.
(3) The relation of the incidence of death to poverty.
(4) Our ignorance as a Sanitary Department of the distribution of Measles
during an epidemic.
To meet these issues, the Health Committee during the earlier part of the year
considered the question of the adoption of Measles as a compulsory notifiable
disease.
It is, of course, admitted that the more complete and accurate the information
which an authority has of a disease, the greater are its opportunities of successfully
dealing with that disease.
On the other hand, the question had to be considered whether the information
gained and the administrative action taken would be justified by the results
attained.
The compulsory notification of Measles has been tried in only a few places, and,
I believe, only two towns have fully published the results of such notification.
As early as 1881 the Corporation of Aberdeen obtained powers for the compulsory
notification of Measles. Under the Aberdeen Local Act of 1881, notification
by the medical attendant only was required. After the passing of the Infectious
Disease Notification Act, 1889, the Town Council adopted it in 1891 in order to
obtain the advantage of dual notification—that is, by the medical attendant and
by the householder. After a report by the Medical Officer of Health the compulsory
notification of Measles was stopped in February, 1903, as experience appeared to
show that the benefit scarcely justified the large cost.
The conclusion which Dr. Hay (the Medical Officer of Health for Aberdeen)
comes to is " that it is obvious from the considerations as to the prevalence of