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42
With regard to Scarlet Fever, neither parents nor teachers
sufficiently realize that many cases of this disease are very mild in
character. The popular opinion that Scarlet Fever must always
be a severe illness is quite incorrect, for it is not at all uncommon
to find a child "peeling" from this disease who has not been absent
from school a day.
I have found several such cases during the past two months.
These mild, unrecognised cases are the chief causes of school
epidemics.
MEASLES.
Despite frequent statements to the contrary, people will
persist in regarding this disease as a trifling matter, and yet the
death-rate is much higher than that from Scarlet Fever.
For the ten years, 1881-1890, the death-rate from the two
diseases in England and Wales was as follows :—
Measles 44 per 10,000 people.
Scarlet Fever 30 per 10,000 people.
Measles in a school is very difficult to check, for it is highly
infectious several days before the appearance of any rash. Owing
to this, school closure is more often necessary for this disease than
for Scarlet Fever.
On 16th October, the Infants' Department of Sandringham
Road School was closed for Measles for a period of three weeks.
This was the only school closed for Infectious Disease during the
year.
PREVENTION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
In consequence of the fact that Infectious Diseases are
scarcely ever absent from the schools, and as the attendance of
the scholars is often considerably diminished from these causes,
I have had a number of cards printed, giving the symptoms of onset
of all the commoner Infectious Diseases, and one of the cards has
been placed in every classroom. I trust by this means many cases
will be recognised by the teachers, and so enable them to be
promptly isolated.