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as possible is, we think, the object to be kept primarily in
view."
The other zymotic diseases (measles, whooping-cough, and
diarrhoea) usually affect the zymotic death-rate to a greater extent,
and are less easily combated by sanitary administration than the four
diseases mentioned above. In the first place the popular imagination
largely discounts the gravity of these cases, and looks upon measles
and whooping cough as almost a necessary evil of child life, nearly
akin to the physiological process of dentition Again, the acute
stage of measles being usually short, the disease is assumed to have
terminated with the disappearance of the rash, many cases receiving
no medical attendance at all, with the result that most of the
fatal cases are due to intercurrent diseases during the period of
convalescence. It is impracticable to put in force the triple line cf
sanitary defenceadopted in dealing with the other zymotics, viz., universal
notification, Hospital isolation, and official disinfection, both on
account of the cost and of the early virulence of the infection.
Notification has been adopted in some towns in the case of measles,
with varying and doubtful results, but no authority, so far as I am
aware, has attempted hospital isolation on sufficiently large scale to
cope with any given severe epidemic. It would appear that nothing
but a gradual education of the poorer classes as to the danger of these
diseases and the best method of treatment, is likely to produce definite
and positive results. And it is here, I believe, that the role of the
woman inspector, offers the best hope of sanitary salvation, a
woman inspector, who, being a trained district nurse could devote
herself to teaching the poorer mothers how to rationally rear their
bottle-fed infants, and how to avoid the dangers due to an ignorant
treatment of the foregoing diseases, the especial assailants of infancy,
working, it may be, through years of patient routine without any
apparent immediate results, but gradually accumulating an educational
reserve of immense value to the well-being of the Borough in more
ways than that originally intended.
That there is ample reason for some attempt in this direction,
is proved by the fact that more than 3,000 deaths from these