Schools and Epidemics The Headmaster of .Stowe in a letter
to The Times defends his action in closing the school for a time as result of the two cases of polyomyelitis (infantile paralysis) which took place there in October. The case he makes is strong, though the course he took was widely criticized at the time. The disease, it is explained, is spread by " carriers " who cannot be detected. It is necessary, therefore, to break up the contacts inevitable in the congested life of a boarding-school, and the only way to do that is to scatter the boys to their homes, provided always that they are temporarily isolated when they get there from other young people liable to contract the disease. -The validity of that argument obviously depends on the character of the disease. A school threatened with a measles epidemic would be justly condemned if it dispersed its pupils indiscriminately to create three or four hundred centres of infection over the country. " In such a case the only thing to do is to let the epidemic run its course and make the best of it—except in so far as insistent parents withdraw their boys at their own risk. •
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