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matron, steward, housekeeper, engineer; 196 nurses, 92 female
servants, and 24 male servants, making, with a few others, a
total of 325. There are three separate and distinct "Homes;"
one for nurses, one for female servants, and one for male
servants. In connection with the training of medical students,
there is provided a lecture room, together with laboratory,
&c. The hospital is lighted throughout by electricity,
generated on the premises, and the whole of the buildings are
connected up by telephone to a small "central exchange" in
the Superintendent-Nurse's office, which is placed, at the
centre of the hospital, at the intersection of the two main
corridors. The cost of the hospital, exclusive of land and
furniture, was £240,000. Obviously expense has not been
spared, but, we were told, that "great care had been taken to
avoid ornamentation; light, air, and cheerfulness,'' it was said,
"had been sought for as the principal features, and
there was not a dark corner throughout the hospital." It may
be assumed that the other two hospitals in course of erection,
at Hither Green ("Park" Hospital) and Lower Tooting
("Grove" Hospital), each to contain upwards of 500 beds, and
to be completed in 1897 and 1898 respectively, will not be
inferior in suitability for their intended purpose to this
splendid institution, the opening of which had been looked
forward to with great interest by many of those upon whom
rests the burden of the sanitary administration of the
Metropolis.
COMPULSORY NOTIFICATION OF INFECTIOUS
DISEASE.
I am indebted to the courtesy of the Clerk to the Metropolitan
Asylums Board for the table at page 92, which
shows the number of notifications of infectious disease in
London in 1896, after correction for duplicate returns. The
table at page 93 is designed to show the relative prevalence
of the several diseases at different periods of the year, being
a summary of the figures set out in my four-weekly reports.
In this table it has not been possible to make the afore-