Epidemics.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19463, 9 November 1928, Page 10

Epidemics.

While most people have been giving their leisure thoughts to sport and politics, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of parents have been worrying over the persistence of the epidemic of scarlet fever. The epidemic, as the local Health Officer has told us, is not in any W7 * deadly one. It is apparently a normally mild form of the disease that is affecting the children, but it has been much more than normally persistent. We have printed some letters and suggestions concerning it, but we have withheld dozens more frpm publication, merely because the writers have assumed, without any bind of reason given, that this or that is the prolonging agency. If the authorities were to adopt all the suggestions made by these correspqn'dents, the ordinary life of the community would be and the country would swarm with inspectors and " euforce- " ment agents." Any one of the prolonging causes suggested may be the ope to concentrate against, but nobody can say which is the one. Medicine is unable to tell us. The official view seems to be that mill* may be the agency of infection, hut we have not found anywhere any explanation of the reason for suspecting milk rather than anything else. What the view of the medical profession may be we dp not know, but it may be conjectured that any really clear-headed doctor would. say that the real reason for the prolongation qf the epidemic is not ascertainable or at least has not been ascertained, Medicine, indeed, is not yet equipped to deal with epidemics, and it is to be doubted whether medicine has ever had much effect upon any epidemic of any kind. Epidemic disease is a sort of ghost which moves invisibly along unsuspected ways. Medicine can treat disease when it meets with it, but it is almost powerless, often enough, to arrest the ghost and lay him low W his tracks. Many of the precautions advised are obviously sensible, but even the most scrupulous

observance of the official advice will not necessarily give protection. During the 1518 epidemic there were volunteer patrols who took no precaution from beginning to end, and who visited heavily infected homes, without suffering the least inconvenience. Others were infected and died, Then there were people whose every waking moment, almost, was occupied with disinfectant and prophylactic rites. Some of these kept themselves immune, and others died. And the epidemic ran its course without regard, so far as is known, to anything that was done by medicine. This epidemic o£ scarlet fever will no doubt end in time, although there is no sign that the end is near. And in the meantime nobody appears to know what can be done about it. Official medicine may score a hit in the dark with regulations and restrictions and commands, but it will be hitting in the dark.