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41
general practitioner for making a diagnosis may be scanty
enough. Of the two evils—admittance of cases not suffering
from the notified infectious disease, or delay in removal,
so as to ensure accuracy in diagnosis, whereby, in many
cases, liability to spread of disease would be entailed—I think
the latter to be by far the greater, and this consideration,
doubtless, weighed with the medical superintendents and the
Committee. Anyhow, as we have seen, the danger of
the present practice is not great, and, having regard to the
classes of persons who go into these noble institutions, it
cannot be doubted that much suffering is alleviated by the
admission of persons who are, presumably, very ill, though not
suffering from the infectious disease notified ; so that,in the long
run, the benefit to the bulk of the sufferers transcends the suffering
caused to the few who contract the disease they were wrongly
thought to have. It may be a question whether the notification
fee should be payable when the diagnosis turns out to
have been incorrect ; the expense under this head, however,
is small by comparison with the costs entailed by disinfection,
which proves to have been unnecessary; and assuredly it
would not do to defer disinfection, which, next to isolation of
the sick, is the best security against the spread of disease.
WHOOPING-COUGH.
Whooping-cough was the cause of 19 deaths, as compared
with 61, 39, and 99, in the preceding three years successively;
15 in the Town sub-district and 4 in Brompton, the corrected
decennial average being 73. All of the deaths were of children
under five years of age, including 8 under one year. The
deaths in London from this cause were 1,842, and 794 below
the corrected decennial average (2,636).
FEVER.
There was no death from Typhus Fever, nor has there been
any during the last fifteen years. From Simple Continued Fever
there was one death. Enteric Fever was the cause of 21
deaths, 15 in the Town sub-district and 6 in Brompton, as