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large employer of labour, he is held responsible for the acts of his servants,
even though he has no guilty knowledge ; and if the principle enunciated
in the amendment of Councillor Briginshaw be accepted so far as meat is
concerned it will soon be claimed under other circumstances and entirely
against the interests of the community at large.
It must be remembered that a defendant has the opportunity of
going into the witness-box and submitting to cross-examination, and if he
should have a good defence, it is, according to my experience, always
considered by the magistrate.
(Signed) FRANCIS STEVENS.
In view of the lack of any special means, such as notification,
whether voluntary or compulsory, together with the
other measures for dealing with phthisis on the same lines to
the eruptive fevers, beyond the offer of disinfection, it is
interesting to note that there are 33 less deaths from this
disease during the past year than in 1904, which showed an
increase of 20 on 1903. The question of supporting voluntary
notification has been referred to the Council, and in view
of their deciding that they would support this, I make no
further comment beyond re-affirming the opinions expressed
in the following report as to its practical uselessness :-
March 7th, 1906.
In the letter from the London County Council, the opinion of this
Council is asked for on two recommendations made by their Medical
Officer of Health (Sir Shirley F. Murphy) ; first, that voluntary notification
should be extended to the whole of London ; and, secondly, that the
Medical Officers of Hospitals, &c., should forward the names of patients
attending to the London County Council for subsequent transmission to
the Boroughs.
Voluntary notification, according to the report, is at present
carried out in all the London Boroughs except Paddington, Hackney,
Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Stepney, Poplar, Battersea, Camberwell,
Deptford, Lewisham and St. Pancras, and its objects are (a) to enable
sanitary authorities to take early and suitable precautions against the
spread of a disease to other susceptible members of a community, and
(b) for the selection of such persons for the open-air treatment as
would derive benefit. Its advantages, therefore, depend on the degree
of infectivity of the disease, and whether it is recognised at a sufficiently
early stage to ensure the treatment and precautions being taken
from the beginning. We know from experience that the notification of a
disease like small-pox, which can usually be made early in the disease, has
been far more successful than the notification of scarlet fever and
diphtheria, when notification is more often delayed.
Much depends on the high or low infectivity of phthisis. We
know that in the case of an unvaccinated person who is exposed to smallpox,
or of a susceptible child to scarlet fever, that the chances are greatly
in favour of a contracting of the disease. Hence we can truly say that