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8
Small Pox.
The district was quite free from this disease during the year but
several suspicious cases of illness occurred in which I was asked by
the Medical Attendant to assist in the diagnosis. Fortunately these
proved not to be Small Pox.
Measles.
The period of five years, for which the Local Government Board
sanctioned the inclusion of Measles amongst the notifiable diseases
under sections 6 and 7 of the Infectious Disease Notification Act
1899, expired in June last, and it will be within the recollection of the
Council that I reported to the Sanitary Committee at their Meeting
in September 1902, and gave reasons why it was not advisable in my
opinion that the Local Government Board should be requested to
extend the time.
The chart appended gives a graphic illustration of the number
of notifications received and the deaths month by month during that
period.
When I advocated the compulsory notification of Measles I
hoped it would have enabled us to prevent the spread of the disease
in epidemics and decrease the extent of the mortality. The 5 years
experience proved that my hopes were not realised. Although I
could not recommend the Council to continue the compulsory notification,
yet no steps which the Local Authority, Philanthropic bodies,
district visiters or nurses can take in educating the public to the
knowledge that the disease is a dangerous one, should be neglected.
For the purpose of my report to the Sanitary Committee in
October 1902, enquiries were made of some 70 places in which
Measles had been for some period a notifiable disease, and of the
60 replies received it was shown that in 41 compulsory notifications
had been revoked, and the 19 places in which it was still in force 9
expressed the opinion that the benefits were doubtful, 5 considered it
useless, and the remaining number stated that it was beneficial in
preventing excessive mortality only. The reply from the Medical
Officer of Health of the City of Edinburgh, where the notification had
been tried for 22 years and where Hospital Isolation of Measles had
as far as possible been carried out, is most significant, and I therefore
quote the following extract from his report:—
" Unfortunately, I have to acknowledge that my hopes have
been falsified. Owing to the fact that the infection has usually
become disseminated to a considerable extent before the noti-