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112
eminently qualified for the position of such authority,
the Local Government Board be requested to confer
on, or, if necessary, to obtain for the said managers,
power to act in that capacity.
That the Managers of the Metropolitan Asylums Board
should also be empowered to use for sanatorium purposes
the "Southern Hospital," recently erected by
them at Carshalton, in the County of Surrey.
That the Government be asked to provide a sum of money
annually for the erection and maintenance of suitable
sanatoria for the treatment of early cases of consumption.
Voluntary notification is in operation in Manchester,
Brighton, and many other large towns, as well as in some of
the Metropolitan Boroughs, and a fair amount of success has
attended its working. I am strongly of opinion that this would
prove of assistance in Battersea in checking the disease. At
the present time we begin at the wrong end of the stick in
dealing with the disease, and much better results would be
obtained if notification were in operation. This would enable
the Health Department to adopt such measures of precaution
as may be required, both in the interest of the patient, and for
the protection of others who may be in contact with him.
During 1907 the Second Interim Report of the Royal
Commission on Tuberculosis was issued, and is a most important
document. The Report definitely and clearly proved the interchangeability
of human and bovine tuberculosis, which was so
sensationally denied by Dr. Koch at the British Congress on
Tuberculosis in July, 1901.
The Commission sum up the bearing of the results at which
they have already arrived as follows:—
"There can be no doubt but that in a certain number of
"cases the tuberculosis occurring in the human subject, especi"ally
in children, is the direct result of the introduction into