Come In, Mumps!

Mumps, in childhood, is no more serious than it sounds, but for grownups it is not only painful but risky (worst complication: sex glands are affected, and sometimes sterility results).

When an eight-year-old in Manhattan's small (161 pupils) City and Country School came down with mumps, the school's medical advisers thought they might as well get it over with: they decided to let the exposed children keep coming to school so that as many pupils as possible might catch mumps. Accordingly, a letter was sent to the children's parents, explaining mumps's Jekyll-Hyde character and asking permission to let the disease do what it would with City and Country. The parents and the children's doctors gave unanimous approval.

Thus invited, the epidemic did its part: in three months, 62 of the 114 susceptible children over five (those under five were not purposely exposed, though four got mumps by mistake) duly swelled up. Complications were mild. But the bright idea turned out to be not so bright. As New York Hospital's Dr. Milton I. Levine reported in last week's Journal of the American Public Health Association: "The final analysis revealed that besides one teacher, who was incapacitated with the disease for two weeks, ten parents suffered from the infection, a possibility which was completely overlooked when the plan was suggested. It is doubtful if any further epidemics will be sponsored by the school."

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