PREVENTION

It is important that small children be kept away from this disease as long as possible. It is particularly difficult to limit the spread of the disease by isolation because the period of greatest contagiousness is that in the beginning when the child is supposed to have a cold. An older child in a family contracts the disease at school or in play with other children, and before he is suspected of having the disease, the younger members of the family have been infected. A vaccine has been prepared from the bacillus of whooping cough which appears to have some value in preventing and rendering milder the disease. As this is harmless it ought to be given to young children as soon after exposure as possible in the hope that it may prevent the disease or make it milder if it develops. After the paroxysms have been established the vaccine seems to be less useful.