The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, JULY 14, 1913. THE EPIDEMIC OUTBREAK.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 58, 14 July 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. MONDAY, JULY 14, 1913. THE EPIDEMIC OUTBREAK.

There can be very little doubt but that the outbreak of disease in the Auckland district is a form of smallpox, similar to the outbreak in New South Wales. Of course the usual rather hysterical rush for immediate vaccination has set in, not only in the northern city but elsewhere. While it is quite possible that innoculation may lie highly beneficial or even only [innocuous, the process is not a pleasant one, and ought to be undertaken with the greatest caution. After all, the main factor in checking the spread of epidemic disease must be cleanliness, bo'h personal and public, and though wo may hope that Auckland's trouble, may not spread over the whole country, it has already reached many centres, and it would be wise for other places to clean up without waiting for a possible visiation. The present outbreak in the north has arisen in filthy and insanitary .Maori villages, and apparently diseased natives have been allowed to wander at large l effecting widespread mischief. It is (bus most probnblv this dirt disease has travelled

to many places, even so close to us as Whangamomona. The Auckland papers arc vovy outspoken and unanimous in this condemnation of the Health Department for permitting the disease to break bounds by allegedly taking no adequate action after it had been hroughl to their notice. As tin 1

Premier very properly said in the House, however, there is no occasion for panic, but there is every necessity that the disease should be

stamped out. So far New Zealand has been singularly free from outbreaks of such diseases as periodical- ) over the Old World, but of

ly swri']

llate years we have been visited by jbubonic plague and now small-pox. There is no reason at all for the preIscnl trouble to become really seri-

ous it proper care is taken. It is impossible with Xew Zealand's close interrour.se with oilier countries, and lhe great interchange of goods which

noes on, to escape all the evil things which afl'lirt Europe, and when they do come to these shores we must accept the fact calmly, neither giving way to panic and alarm, nor yet indolentlj perm it ting the thing to run on unheeded. Chickenpox or smallpox—whatever the present epidemic outbreak may be—should quickly disappear from these wind-blown healthful islands.