View report page

2
3. That the proper course instead of blindly following in the wake of
other boroughs was to wait and see the result of notification in them.
4. That notification was no service whatever unless followed by remedial
measures.
5. That it was absurd to disinfect the rooms in which people suffering
from phthisis had been living.
6. That it was no value whatever except to take the ratepayers' money
and place it in the hands of medical men.
7. That it would cause friction between the Medical Officer of Health
and the medical men in the borough.
8. That there were doubts as to whether this disease was caused by a
bacillus.
9. That it had not been proved that the disease was infectious.
10. That the working classes would resent the intrusion of the Council's
officials.
Now in the face of the facts and figures that I gave in my report, many of
these contentions could not for a moment be sustained, and, indeed, were
based on no solid foundation of fact, and would not have been alleged if
it had been carefully studied.
I do not propose to discuss them now for I am convinced that any person
who carefully reads this further report, will come to an opposite conclusion
to that which the majority of the late Council came to, and who adopted a
resolution, which I feel would never have been arrived at, if they had not been
more or less swayed by two members of the medical profession, who I am
bound to assert gave utterance to opinions which were entirely their own and
which were not held by the great majority—fully four-fifths—of their professional
brethren practising in Islington. Indeed, I would not be far wrong in
asserting that, with an additional exception, the members of the medical profession
agreed with the Committee that the voluntary notification of pulmonary
tuberculosis was necessary, and that they were willing to notify the disease. At
all events this was the opinion of Dr. John Gray Glover, J.P., so well-known in
connection with all public movements having as their object the welfare of this
borough, who wrote a letter to Alderman Cufflin, the former Chairman of
your Committee, soon after the proposal was rejected by the Council. It
is valuable as showing what so well-known a citizen thinks on this subject,
and also as a reflection of the general opinion held by the medical profession,
of which he may rightly be said to be the doyen in Islington.