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11
to the Sanitary Committee, and in order that it may be complete
I append to this report the several reports made by them to your
Vestry, numbered 1 to 7, together with a Statement of the expenditure
incurred in the carrying out of this most praiseworthy
undertaking.
I shall leave those interesting reports upon the Camp Hospital
to speak for themselves, and will content myself with merely ex
pressing my own strong conviction that the step taken by your
Vestry was a wise one, and that it would be still wiser never to be
without such an invaluable resource as a Camp Hospital for use in
times of emergency and danger.
I would remind the Vestry that an outbreak of Small Pox
never occurs without creating considerable alarm, (I had almost
written, panic,) and that infectious hospitals in our midst are
decidedly unpopular. Witness for instance the outcry that occurred
in connection with the late City of London Workhouse in the
Shadwell Road, Holloway.
The loathsomeness of this terrible and disfiguring scourge
makes it even more dreaded than the most fatal of the other infectious
diseases.
It is the one disease of all others which is most likely to loosen
the family tie, and break the social bond; which even makes the
husband willing to part with the wife, the wife with the husband,
parents with the children, the friend with the friend. Like the
leper, indeed, the sufferer must go without the City, though, happily,
not without hope.
Facts are not wanting to support this view. In perhaps no
other disease and upon no other hypothesis would 522 out of 797
persons have been prevailed upon to go to hospital. Hence the
urgent necessity for having ample hospital accommodation always
available.
The disease, moreover, when once started, spreads with curious
rapidity, and the demand for Hospital accommodation increases in