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70
The amount of work that will be done in the laboratory
will depend upon the use the medical practitioners of
Lambeth make of the opportunities offered, free of cost,
by the Vestry—separate diphtheria and typhoid "outfits"
having been forwarded to each; and it rests with them,
therefore, to make the experiment a huge success, and the
laboratory a permanent institution for Lambeth, under the
care of a specially appointed bacteriologist—the Medical
Officer's time being too much engaged with other duties
to enable him permanently to carry out this extra work in
connection with bacteriological diagnosis. It is clearly
advisable that the Medical Officer should be directly responsible
to the Vestry for the management and efficiency
of the bacteriological laboratory, as any irregularity in its
management might prove serious, and cause endless trouble
and inconvenience to the members of the medical profession
(practising in Lambeth Parish), for whom, alone,
the Vestry has gone to the expense of providing this
gratuitous bacteriological diagnosis, with a view to lessening
the amount of infectious diseases in the Parish by
securing greater precision and rapidity in diagnosis.
In connection with bacteriological diagnosis in diphtheria,
the Metropolitan Asylums Board have made
arrangements for the gratuitous distribution of antitoxic
serum by Medical Officers of Health to the medical
attendants of patients who are suffering from diphtheria,
but who cannot be removed to Hospital owing to want
(in times of extra pressure) of sufficient accommodation.
This use of antitoxic serum may be (1) curative, and (2)
prophyllactic or preventative.