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14
(j) Crippling Defects.
The discrepancy in the figures for 1924 and 1925 is quite inexplicable
except on the assumption that different standards were taken by
the medical examiners. Rickets is reputed to have accounted for 7
cases in 1924 and 46 in 1925; spinal curvature for 226 in 1924 and 41
in 1925; and other forms of deformity gave 321 in 1924, against 794
in 1925.
The fact that remedial exercise classes have been established in
practically all the schools has resulted in the slightest departure from
symmetry being searched for and noted.
Infectious Diseases.
Notification of the occurrence of an infectious disease is followed by
action appropriate to its type. In the great majority of instances a
child suffering from diphtheria is removed to hospital immediately upon
receipt of the official notification. The room, or rooms, which the
infected person inhabited, are disinfected by formalin spray, and the
clothing is disinfected. All contacts in the household have swabs taken
from throat or nose, or both, and the cultures are examined the following
day. Children whose cultures are proved to be positive, that is, those
who harbour the diphtheria bacilli in throat or nose are excluded from
school until a swab shows no evidence of diphtheria bacilli, or that the
bacilli are non-virulent. The virulence of the bacilli is determined
for us by the pathologist of the Prince of Wales's Hospital.
The presence of bacilli morphologically similar to the diphtheria
bacilli is a matter that has given cause for thought to the medical
officers. Several swabs are taken from children with Hoffmann's or
kindred bacilli, before they are readmitted to school, to ascertain
whether they are associated with true Klebs Loeffler Bacilli.
The occurrence of two or more cases of diphtheria, amongst children
attending the same classroom, causes a thorough search to be made
amongst the remainder for a possible carrier. This is done by swabbing
suspects. or the whole class as the circumstances "dictate, and examination
of bacteriological cultures. The classrooms affected are also
disinfected.
My opinion is that healthy children who do not show bacteriological
evidence of the presence of Klebs Loeffler Bacilli in throat or nose, may