View report page

106
practical benefit has hitherto resulted from notification, so far
as the mitigation of the disease is concerned,"and makes an
observation which appears to be amply justified by the facts
adduced, viz. that "in a large town with a susceptible
population and hospital accommodation necessarily limited,
when compared with the requirements of an outbreak of
measles, notification as a means of checking the disease is
practically useless."
This question of the desirability of the notification of
measles,was recently debated by theSociety of Medical Officers
of Health, but no resolution was come to thereon, it being felt
that notification without provision for hospital treatment was
" practically useless."
Notification of Erysipelas.—The Metropolitan
Asylums Board some little time back requested the Local
Government Board to consider,whether the advantage derived
from the inclusion of erysipelas among the notifiable diseases
is proportionate to the cost of its notification ? The Board
replied that, as they were advised—
"Erysipelas is an infectious disease, communicable from person to person,
and of very special concern to lying-in women, to vaccinated children,
and to persons requiring surgical operations; and further, that there is
no medical reason for limiting erysipelas for the purposes of notification
to 'non-traumatic or idiopathic cases,' as has been proposed by the
Chelsea Vestry. In these circumstances the Board see no sufficient
ground for a modification of the provisions of the Public Health
(London) Act, 1891, as regards the notification of erysipelas."
The notifications of erysipelas in London in 1891 were
close on 5000 in number ; many of the cases being, if I may
judge from my own experience, of an unimportant
character, due to trifling injuries, &c. No benefit arises from
the notification of such cases: the legislature could hardly
have contemplated their notification: the occurrence of such
cases, moreover, could have no practical bearing on the classes
of cases referred to by the Local Government Board, and often