154 ADMINISTRATIVE SECTION 



uas one of which his friend from Sunderland would not 

 approve. Councillor Ritson thought that the Government 

 was doing too much, and he said he would not appeal to 

 them to do anything more. He (Mr. Cresswell) would 

 appeal to the Local Government Board to make something 

 that was now only permissive compulsory. He would insist 

 that every Public Health Committee should make measles 

 compulsorily notifiable for a time, and then he believed they 

 would very soon be able to stamp it out. Much had been 

 done in other places. It was not merely the 10,000 deaths 

 that they had to consider, but it was the lasting injury that 

 was done to those who lived. The eye, the ear, and, more 

 than anything else, the lungs were affected by the disease. 

 If they looked down the death statistics they would find 

 that there was almost always the same number of infantile 

 deaths going on from bronchitis and pneumonia as from 

 measles. If they got 13 deaths in a particular district 

 from measles they would get from n to 14 from bronchitis 

 or pneumonia, and let them remember that it was those 

 diseases that laid the foundation for consumption. He 

 was talking with one of the chief experts a short time ago, 

 and that gentleman assured him that whatever amount of 

 money the Government or anybody else spent in treating 

 consumption they would never materially reduce it, or they 

 would not reduce it as much as they ought to for the money 

 spent until they began with the subject of measles, because 

 measles impaired the lungs to such an extent that it was 

 impossible for many children to avoid consumption when 

 they came in contact with it in any shape or form. Those 

 of them (and he believed it included everybody connected 

 with the Conference) who took an interest in infant life 

 would, he hoped, take an interest in that subject, and do 

 what they could in their different localities to get measles 

 compulsorily notifiable. It was most vital in the interests 

 of the nation that they should get that disease stamped out. 

 He would like to see some scientific medical research in 

 regard to that disease, and if something of the sort were 

 done, and they could get the health authorities to take up 

 the subject and see whether some system could not be found 

 of rendering children immune from such a dire disease, they 

 would be doing something for their day and generation. 



Dr. S. G. MOORE (Huddersfield), in replying, said he 

 would like to say, apropos of the remarks of' Alderman 

 Cresswell, that measles, the prevalence and extent of which 

 he deplored so very properly, was by no means escaping the 

 attention of manv medical officers of health, and he might 

 tell Mr. Cresswell that the particular method of preventing 



