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20
hospitals, notwithstanding the profit they derive from
their out-patients, are always impecunious.
The following table gives the relative proportions of
notifications of certain infectious diseases received by
me from hospital out-patient doctors and private
practitioners.

An inspection of this table will give some idea
of the extent to which the hospital out-patient department
is encroaching upon the field of the general
practitioner. The table shews that the total number
of persons suffering from these four diseases in Bethnal
Green during the year was 1,688, and that one fourth
of this number of infectious sick persons must have
passed through the public streets on their way to and
sometimes from the hospitals. These figures reveal a
most unsatisfactory condition of things, and I have
no hesitation in asserting, with reference to certain
hospitals, that the overgrown out-patient departments,
as at present managed, are not only grossly unfair to
the general practitioner, but they constitute a grave
public danger.