View report page

82
authorities, but also by private medical practitioners and
others. Among these circumstances may be mentioned, the
depauperisation of medical relief in the hospitals, and the
opening of the several institutions to all classes of the people,
(measures advocated in these reports many years before they
formed the subjects of legislation); the admission of patients,
on whatever form of application, subject only to the production
of a medical certificate; gratuitous treatment; the popularity
of the hospitals themselves; and the increasing recognition
by the public of the advantages accruing from the
isolation of the infectious sick. The operation of compulsory
notification, moreover, has had great effect; for now that the
sanitary authorities become acquainted with, practically, all
cases of infectious disease, they are able to secure the admittance
to hospital of numbers of cases, such as in pre-notification
days they would probably never have so much as heard.
In connection with this important question, it may be mentioned
that so far back as the end of 1893, the Managers had
provided normal accommodation to the extent of about 3,000
beds, for fever and diphtheria patients, by the erection of additional
temporary hospitals at Tottenham and Lower Tooting.
Since that date the Brook Hospital, for upwards of 500
patients, has been erected and opened at Shooter's-hill, and
the Park Hospital, at Hither-green, Lewisham, also for upwards
of 500 patients. An equally large hospital, the "Grove,"
was opened in 1899 at Tooting, adjoining the "Fountain"
hospital. These three hospitals for acute cases of fever,
scarlet fever, and diphtheria, and isolation wards, have added
some 1,636 beds to those previously provided by the Managers;
who, moreover, have acquired a site of 135 acres at
Carshalton, Surrey, for a convalescent fever hospital for 700
patients; having already, at Winchmore-hill, north of the
Thames, at the Northern Convalescent Hospital, accommodation
for nearly 700 patients. In addition to the new