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81
HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION.
In the annual report for 1893 (pages 117 to 130 inclusive),
I dealt with " The needs of the Metropolis in respect of
Hospital Accommodation for the Infectious Sick"; detailed
the steps taken by the Asylums Board to supply the then existing
deficiencies, and referred to the difficulties by which
their efforts had been confronted and, to a certain extent,
foiled. Those difficulties have been now largely overcome;
and the needs of the metropolis have been met to an extent
beyond my estimate of them, made in the tenth monthly
report for 1892, which, at the time, was thought to be excessive,
viz.: "at least 5,000 beds for scarlet fever, 'fever'
diphtheria, aed isolation."
Fever Hospital Accommodation.—It is an accepted
axiom that provision for the isolation of infectious disease
should be made at the rate of not less than one bed for each
thousand of the population. The subject, as regards the
metropolis, was dealt with by the Royal Commission in
1881-82, and the Commissioners stated in their report (1882)
that the then provision of hospitals should be extended so as
to provide 5,700 beds at the least; viz., 3,000 nominally for
"Fever," and 2,700 for Small-pox. Diphtheria cases were not
at that time admissible to the hospitals. The population of
London in 1882 was a little under 4,000,000 ; consequently
the recommendation of the Commissioners went, to the extent
of 1,700 beds, beyond the theoretical requirements of the day.
The Commissioners, presumably, desired that provision should
be made for a lengthened period in advance, and the amount
of accommodation they advised as necessary, is even now in
excess of the standard requirement, the estimated population
being under 4,600,000. But circumstances they
could scarcely have anticipated have led to largely increased
demands on the Managers' resources; not only by the sanitary