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1911] 172
"The British Medical Association between 1865 and 1874, made repeated
efforts to secure more complete registration of disease, and in 1869 a deputation
from the Association on the subject was sympathetically received by Mr.
Goschen, the then President of the Poor Law Board.
"Under the Board's General Order of the 12th February, 1879, it was the
incumbent on district and workhouse medical officers appointed since 28th
February, 1879, to furnish the Medical Officer of Health with returns of
pauper sickness and deaths, as well as to notify to him the outbreak of any
dangerous infectious disease. Either because the information obtained was
not sufficiently accurate for statistical purposes, or for some other reason, this
information has not been utilised by the Medical Officers of Health to the
extent which was desirable.
"Although the attempts to establish a national system of registration of
disease appear to have gradually ceased, the leaven of the protracted agitation
in favour of it was at work. In particular, as the appointment of Medical
Officers of Health became more general, these officers represented with
increasing force the public danger implied in the absence of information as to
the occurrence of infectious diseases as soon as they were recognised. Gradually
the idea of compulsory notification of infectious maladies, as the most urgent
branch of a national system of registration of disease, became realised in a
characteristically British fashion. Local experiment preceded general action.
Huddersfield in 1876 and Bolton in 1877, by local Acts secured the compulsory
notification of the chief infectious diseases within their areas of administration.
Other towns followed their example. In 1889 the Infectious Disease (Notification)
Act was passed. This Act provided for the notification, in districts
where it was adopted, of a specified list of infectious diseases, and gave power
to sanitary authorities to add to the list of notifiable diseases with the consent
of the Board. In a few years it was adopted in the majority of the sanitary
districts of England and Wales. In 1899 an amending Act rendered notification
of the scheduled infectious diseases compulsory in all districts.
"Plague was made compulsorily notifiable throughout England and Wales
on 19th September, 1900, by Order of the Board.
"Cases of pulmonary tuberculosis occurring in patients under the medical
care of Poor Law Medical Officers became compulsorily notifiable under the
Public Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations, 1908, from the 1st January, 1909.