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13
As the excessive mortality from whooping cough is to a great
extent preventable, it is lamentable that so many deaths, and
such great injury to the lungs of many who survive should
arise, partly from want of knowledge and partly from carelessness.
As I mentioned some years ago in one of my reports, if
ohildren were kept indoors during the early stage of whooping
cough, especially in cold weather, inflamatory complications
would comparatively rarely arise, and the number of deaths
would be greatly reduced. But there is another cause of the
frequency of whooping cough, viz. the exposure of children
affected with the disease in omnibusses, railway trains, schools,
dispensaries and hospitals. It is not generally known that
whooping cough is infectious in an early stage of the disease,
indeed before the whoop is manifest, so that in the case of schools
the damage is often done before any danger of infection is
suspected. At any rate no child should be exposed in any
public place or vehicle; or in any school, hospital or dispensary,
when it is known to be suffering from this disease. As whooping
cough is not usually considered to be included amongst the
dangerous infectious diseases, although I have no doubt that it
belongs to that class, I shall apply to the Sanitary Committee
for authority to prosecute the person in charge of the sick
whenever a case conies to my knowledge of such exposure within
this District in a railway train or public conveyance, where the
sufferer is kept in the vicinity of healthy persons for some
considerable time.