Metropolitan Asylum District. Report of the committee of management of the Fulham Hospital for the year 1877.

  • Fulham Hospital. Committee of Management.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Metropolitan Asylum District. Report of the committee of management of the Fulham Hospital for the year 1877. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    most humane to the family immediately concerned, whilst most conducive to the protection of the community at large. Compulsory Registration of Infectious Disease. There is one point almost universally agreed on, and without doubt forming the keystone of any future effective measures for the suppression of Smallpox. It is the com- pulsory notification to the Sanitary Authorities, within rea- sonable time, of the outbreak of infectious disease. It is all fighting in the dark without this. Compare the stringent regulations with regard to infectious cattle diseases, e.g.^ glanders, and the measures for dealing with infectious diseases affecting man. I will simply illustrate the matter by two cases, amongst numerous others, which came under my notice. For instance, in a house in North Kensington, occupied by twenty.two persons, a child contracted Smallpox in June; no Medical man was called in, and the existence of the disease was deliberately concealed by the father, even from the other inmates of the house, for about a fortnight. Someone, ob- serving blankets covered with scabs exposed on a wall, com- municated auonymously with the authorities; the latter, however, found it not a case in which removal could be com- pelled. The upshot of the matter was that twelve other inmates of the house were attacked successively, and eleven removed to Fulham Hospital; and further, five persons in two houses immediately at the back, in consequence probably of the exposure of the blankets. The Medical Officer of Health was advised that this exposure was not an offence within the 38th Section of the Sanitary Act of 1866.
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