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26
MEASLES.
Measles.—The deaths from measles in 1887 were 108
(22 of them in Brompton,) being nearly double the number
(56) recorded in 1886, and 40 above the corrected decennial
average. Ninety-six of the deaths occurred under five years of
age, including 23 under one year. The disease was more or less
prevalent throughout the year, seeing that it appeared in
each of my thirteen four-weekly reports as a cause of death.
The deaths, however, in the first half of the year (82) were
more than thrice as numerous as in the latter half. In the
majority of the fatal cases, some intercurrent disease—of the
respiratory organs usually—complicating the original malady,was
the immediate cause of death. Comparatively little care is
taken by parents among the poorer classes to prevent spread of
measles. Not regarding it as a serious disease, considering it,
moreover, to be inevitable as teething, they naturally enough
rather prefer that all of the children should have it at one time.
We must allow, however, that it is difficult to prevent measles
from spreading, the disease being highly infectious from an
early stage, if not from the commencement of the attack.
The circumstances, moreover, in which the poor live in
London—two or more families generally occupying one house
and using a common staircase—almost preclude the possibility
of isolation. But more care might be taken to protect
the sufferers against secondary affections, which, as already
stated, are, as a rule, the immediate causes of death.
An outbreak at Notting Hill, involving seventeen (known)
cases in four families, and two deaths, was due to infection
carried to a children's party of thirty by a child supposed to be
suffering from a cold, but who had an eruption, diagnosed and
treated as measles on the following day. Four of the children,
in one family, came from Ealing. A child, who came from
Croydon, subsequently infected three other children in the same
family in that town.