STUDIES made in the past nine years by William Firth Wells and Mildred Weeks Wells 14 in Philadelphia and its suburbs on the effect of ultraviolet irradiation of classrooms on the spread of measles, chickenpox, and mumps in school children, have suggested that such irradiation has reduced the spread of these diseases, particularly measles, in the classrooms studied. In an attempt to repeat their observations, similar experiments have been undertaken by the New York State Department of Health t in three rural centralized schools in upstate New York. Actual observations in these experiments did not begin until January, 1945, but the extensive measles epidemic which occurred in New York State in the winter of 1945-1946 makes this early preliminary epidemiological report possible. The decision to conduct the study in centralized rural schools was determined primarily by their having certain characteristics which constitute highly de-*Presented before the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association at the Seventyfourth Annual Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, November 14, 1946. t This study has been made by a team of the department, with the various aspects represented as follows: epidemioloaical, Drs. Perkins and Bahlke; statistical, Hilda F. Silverman; engineering, C. R. Cox; and bacteriological, F. W. Gilcreas, assisted by Hazel V. Roberts.
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