HEALTH DEPARTMENT
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
ANTERIOR POLIOMYELITIS
The State Board of Health has declared Anterior Poliomyelitis to be a disease dangerous to the
public health and as such must be immediately reported to the local Board of Health.
Failure to comply
with this statute involves liability to a fine of fifty dollars for each offense.
From all information obtainable of epidemics of this disease in other places, as well as a study of
the epidemic now in progress in this city, the disease is without doubt of an infectious and contagious
nature. The causative agent is not known, but the mortality and subsequent paralyses and
deformities, which are only too much in evidence, places Anterior Poliomyelitis amongst the diseases
most dangerous to life and future usefulness.
The Board of Health has therefore established a strict isolation period for this disease of four
weeks from date of notification, with disinfection at termination of the period. No public funerals will
be allowed of patients dying from this disease.
It is only, however, through the earnest and active cooperation of the medical profession, who
come in personal contact with the disease, that definite results can be obtained by the Board of Health in
checking the spread of the epidemic.
Physicians are therefore urged to use every precaution in preventing its spread which
now in
use in the management of other contagious diseases, and to explain very carefully to the family the
dangers arising, not only to themselves, but to others, from a disregard of the regulations of the Board
of Health. If this line of action is pursued by the medical profession it is believed that as good results
will be obtained as to undertake the establishment of an absolute quarantine, with all its discomforts,
hardships and consequent tendency on the part of the public to conceal the existence of the disease.
If physicians will advise all their families, as a matter of self-protection, to at once establish a
voluntary isolation for themselves, the best quarantine possible will then be produced. Children should
be kept at home and not allowed to attend picnics, excursions, Sunday school, theaters, playgrounds,
or other places where children come together in numbers.
GURDON W. GORDON
THOMAS F. REARDON, M. D.
EDGAR H. GUILD, M. D.
BOARD OF HEALTH
JULY 27, 1910
