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16
patient shall forthwith, on becoming aware that the patient is suffering
from an infectious disease to which this section applies, send to the
medical officer of health of the district (f) stating the full name and
the age and sex of the patient, the full postal address of the house,
and the infectious disease from which in the opinion of such
medical practitioner the patient is suffering, and stating also whether
the case occurs in the private practice of such practitioner or in his
practice as a medical officer of any public body or institution, and
where the certificate refers to the inmate of a hospital it shall specify
the place from which and the date at which the inmate was brought
to the hospital, and shall be sent to the medical officer of health of
the district in which the said place is situate.
The discussions have nearly always risen round the action of the
medical practitioner, who presumably obeying the words "in the
opinion of such medical practitioner," has notified a case of illness as
being one of the notifiable diseases, and subsequently has been unfortunate
enough to find his diagnosis contradicted, either by a brother
practitioner or by the medical superintendent of a hospital; in this
latter case, the contradiction accompanied by the return of the patient
home and more or less damage to the notifying practitioner's reputation.
I am not sure that the practice lately adopted by the Metropolitan
Asylums Board of notifying medical officers of health of these errors
of diagnosis will not tend to make medical men over careful—if that
be possible—in notifying; it certainly ought to make them more
careful in signing removal orders.
I think it must rarely occur that a patient without the pronounced
symptoms of one of the scheduled diseases should be removed to a
hospital for the benefit of others, in other words I think should undeniably
show the acknowledged symptoms of the disease notified
before the machinery for removal is set going, expense incurred, and