View report page

11
A Registration of Disease.
No progress has been made in this. My letter of
July 15th, 1870, suggesting to the Secretaries of the
Dispensaries in the Parish the keeping of a Register
exhibiting information relative to zymotic diseases,
and requesting in the event of their adopting such a
system, that they would afford access to the officers of
the Vestry, has met with no success.
Nothing will be done until it becomes a part of
future Sanitary law to have a national registration of
sickness, embracing at least the diseases of the zymotic
and preventible character, from hospitals, dispensaries,
schools, charitable and public institutions, and from
private houses. It should be compulsory and incumbent
upon the medical attendants to make known to the
Sanitary authorities the existence of a contagious
malady. Such information is essential for the protection
of public health, and need not involve any
disagreeable consequences, expense or trouble. I would
have sent an officer weekly to collect these statistics of
fresh cases occuring in public institutions on a return
which is in use, but they have in general no sufficient information,
either as to the seat of the disease (the address
of the patient) or the nature of the disease—being absent
in the register kept. If the exact locality were but made
known, the inspector of nuisances would make it part of
his duty to advise or assist in removing unsanitary conditions
found there. Overcrowding, and the spreading
of contagious disease, cannot be effectually controlled
in a Parish of 100,000 persons without this collateral
assistance.