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and of avoiding every possible delay in the preliminaries,
have given instruction to their ambulance nurses to accept,
as a medical certificate, a copy of the notification certificate,
endorsed by the Sanitary Authority." The Board, it must
be allowed, have, during the last few years, manifested the
most commendable determination to make their hospitals of
the greatest possible use to the community, by removing, one
by one, the barriers to free admission. The latest illustration
of the fact occurred in December last, when one of the
Metropolitan Sanitary Authorities having made request
that the Board should not admit from their district, "in
times of epidemic," any cases other than those " whose
removal is requested " by the said authority, the Managers
informed the Vestry in question, that they did "not see their
way to restrict the means of application for the removal of
patients to the hospitals, from any portion of the metropolis,
in the manner suggested ... or to adopt any other method
for the selection of cases for admission, than that at present
in force." What that method is, in its extremest development,
was shown in a Memorandum submitted to the Managers
by their Clerk, in November last, from which it appears that,
" In order to give to the poor every facility for making their
applications for the removal of patients, they are allowed to
apply (at the Board's Offices) either personally, or by letter,
or by telegram, or by telephone ; or at any one of the several
Ambulance Stations, personally or otherwise (in which case
the message is telephoned to the Offices as received), or
through the Sanitary Officials of their districts, or Relieving
Officers; or through any other channel." Here is freedom
indeed ! and such as I scarcely dared„to hope for when, in 1877,
I began, if I may so speak, the assault upon the doors of the
hospitals to secure free admittance-for all classes. It must
be manifest that, under the present system, the demands on
the Managers' resources will continue to increase; for each
added facility for effecting isolation of the sick has increased the