View report page

42
INTERRUPTION OF EDUCATION RESULTING FROM
INFECTIOUS DISEASE.
In my 12th Report for 1880 (November 10th, page 72) I wrote
as follows:—
"The evil resulting from infectious disease by interference with
education is deserving of attention at the hands of the School
Board lor London. It has been publicly asserted that children are
allowed to go to school from houses where scarlet fever is known to
exist: but this is not my experience, and we have co-operated
earnestly with the officers of the Board to arrest the spread of
disease by preventing children going to school from infected houses.
Thus it has happened that owing to the refusal of parents to send
their children to hospital, and the occurrence of case after case in a
house—at intervals of weeks, it may be—the house has remained
infected for a very long time, the education of whole families of
children being interrupted even for months. And yet all the while
convalescing children may have been running about the streets
spreading infection. It is, moreover, too much the habit even
with some professional men to regard "mild" cases too lightly, as
if such cases were as little dangerous to others as they are to the
sufferers themselves. It is not long since that a certificate was
given that children might go to school from a certain house, there
"being no infection," owing to the mildness of an illness; but the
next we heard from that house was of the death of a child who had
contracted the disease from the aforementioned "mild" case. This
"mild" case commenced on 26th September, and the authority to
attend school was given 18th October. The second child died on
the 22nd October, after eight days illness, and therefore had been
attacked on the 14th October, or four days prior to the date of the
certificate of freedom from infection."
It is satisfactory to know that this question has lately received
considerable attention at the hands of the School Board for London,
by which it was in the spring of the present year referred to two of
the members, viz., Dr. B. W. Richardson, F.R.S., and Professor
Gladstone, F.R.S., who conferred with the Society of Medical Officers
of Health thereon. These gentlemen thought the Society would