[Report 1896] / Medical Officer of Health, Wednesbury Borough.

  • Wednesbury (England). Borough Council.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1896] / Medical Officer of Health, Wednesbury Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Notification would be a certain expense, and under present condi¬ tions, an uncertain benefit. Something more is wanted and that u something is a Hospital or Hospitals that would receive cases of “ measles, lor a vast community like the Metropolis there woul l be no greater boon than the establishment by philanthropic effort or local enterprise of such Institutions. Probably an average period of “ three weeks would suffice for the treatment of the malady hence the u Hospital accommodation would not require to be on so large a sc de as “ that of accommodation for Scarlet Fever. If Hospital accommoda- “ tion were available there would not be a sinde Health Authority “ that would not recommend notification so that each case occurring in u families with restricted accommodation could be isolated. The “ present mortality from Measles is not due to special malignity but to u the practical impossibility of skilled treatment and nursing in the “ crowded houses of the town workers.” If the statistics of mortality from Measles be studied for any year ; it will be seen that as a fatal disease it is practically confined to children under five years of age, and this is true of the epidemic under consideration thus the deaths at the various ages were as follows ;— under one year 11 ; at and under two years 21 ; at two years and under three years 5 ; at three years and under four years 7 ; at four years and under five years 3 ; at five years and under six years 3 ; at seven years and under 8 years 2 ; giving 92-1 per cent under five years of asre. o The only step which was taken to check the spread of the disease was to close the schools. Only nine deaths had been registered as due to Measles when on February the 14th, I wrote to the Clerk of the Wednesbury School Board, recommending the closure of the schools. The Wesleyan Schools on the Holyhead Road ; and those of St. Bartholomews had already been closed by the School Authorities acting upon their own responsibility and I endorsed their action. The beneficial result of this wholesale closure which was put in force for two weeks as an experiment was never manifest; and I may say that I never expected it would be. Success in some county districts in arrest¬ ing epidemic of Measles appears to have followed notification ; followed by the prompt closing of the schools. But this may be all very well in a sparse population. It is far otherwise in a densely populated district