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infectious disease occurring in the parish, immediately followed;
and the results, generally, were such as to demonstrate
the value of notification, and to make one long for the fuller
light which compulsion alone could afford. In 1889, the
Infectious Disease (Notification) Act was passed, having been
introduced by the President of the Local Government Board,
who had had an object lesson, enforcing the necessity for
notification, on the occasion of a visit to Sheffield in January,
1888, when small-pox was raging in that city. The Act,
which passed both Houses practically without opposition,
made notification compulsory in London; elsewhere the Act
was adoptive. By this time (1889) some sixty or seventy
municipal corporations and other sanitary authorities, had
obtained notification powers in private Acts; and after the
passing of the general Act, more and more of such authorities
availed themselves of the means placed at their disposal by
Parliament, until, in 1899, nearly the whole of England and
Wales had come under its operation. And now, the small
remainder of the population has been made subject to
notification, under the provisions of the Act of last year.*
* The history of Notification, and the cognate subjects of Hospital Accommodation
for the Infectious Sick, and Ambulance Service, showing the action
taken by the Vestry in bringing about the present satisfactory arrangements, is
dealt with in my Presidential Address to the Conference of Medical Officers of
Health, held at Southampton in August, 1899, in connection with the Congress of
the Sanitary Institute. The address was published in the Journal of the
Institute in October last.