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supplied, the inability of the Managers to meet the requirements
of the Sanitary Authorities continued right on to the
end of the year. In my tenth report (October 10th, page
132), I called attention to the fact that the prevalence of
small pox had for some weeks been getting less and less
This being so, and the need of accommodation for scarlet fever
and diphtheria having in no degree abated, I urged that the
time had come when effect should be given to the Managers'
resolution of 6th July, and that the Gore Farm Hospitals
(Upper and Lower) should be permanently utilised for
convalescent fever patients, thus adding to the existing accommodation
about twelve hundred beds. Small-pox at this time
was at low ebb, and, had it become necessary, the Managers
could have provided temporary accommodation for sufferers
from that disease at their new estate, near the Ships at Longreach,
on which it is proposed to erect a permanent hospital.
Again, in my eleventh report (November 12th, page 143), I
had to report continued, and even an increasing, deficiency
of accommodation, due to the increase in scarlet fever and
diphtheria, as shown by the notifications of both diseases.
Nevertheless, the subject having been again considered by
the Managers (26th October), they decided, not to utilise any
portion of the Gore Farm Hospital; an " urgency " motion by
the Chairman, directing the Small-pox Hospitals Committee
to prepare different parts of the hospital, successively, for
opening at the earliest possible moment, for convalescing fever
cases, having been defeated on a division by a majority of six.
Having regard to the still continuing diminution in the
number of cases of small-pox under treatment —on November
2nd they were 106 only, and all of them accommodated at
the Ships, which furnish 300 beds—I ventured to express the
opinion that " the Managers would have done wisely, by
incurring any risk there might have been, in diverting one
of the hospitals to the use of fever cases, even if they had
thought it prudent to reserve the other for the contingency of
an increase in the number of small-pox patients which might