Annual report of the Medical Officer of Health for the year 1908 / C. F. Stovin.

  • Ilford (London, England). Urban District Council.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Annual report of the Medical Officer of Health for the year 1908 / C. F. Stovin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    7° measles previously, I advised closure of the Infants’ Depart¬ ment for three weeks. The effect of the closure, however, had little or no effect in checking- the spread of the disease, and after that I gained information of another 22 children attending the Infants’ School who had contracted measles. This number only represented those cases where there were other older children attending school. Obviously there were other cases where the patient was the only child at¬ tending school. In the course of enquiries I came across a few instances of this occurring, and no doubt there were others. In both instances of the Valentines and Chadwell Infants’ Schools the closure had no effect in checking the spread of the disease, but in view of the amount of com¬ bustible material in each school compared with the total size of the school they were both instances where closure, if ever, was justified. If the schools had not been closed the attendance would have been so poor as to be a com- partivelv serious loss to the Education Authority, without the compensating advantage of much real educational benefit to the other children. The financial consideration is not of very grave importance on either side in determining the closure of a school, but it is impossible to avoid its being an element, though it may be a small one. During this epidemic, as it was found there was criti¬ cism by some of the medical men involved of the action of the Education Authority in allowing other older children from an infected household to attend school, a letter was sent to each medical practitioner in the district describing the course of procedure adopted by this Authority, and quoting the portion of the memorandum of the Local Government Board relating to this question, issued in the early part of the year: “On the Circumstances L'nder Which the Closing of Public Elementary Schools or the