View report page

39
Voluntary Notification of the disease, from the standpoint of the
patient, was seriously discounted by the fact that it is rare to receive
such a notification before the patient is almost beyond hope. My
subsequent experience, under the Voluntary Notification of the disease,
fully bears out this contention. Last December I tabulated the facts of
those patients who had been notified during the year ending September,
1904. The return is a very gruesome one. There had been
during that period fifty-three cases notified ; of these at the time of
the enquiry forty-three were dead, six were much worse than at the
time of notification, two had removed and left no address, and only
two were known to have made any improvement. Under these circumstances
it can scarcely be said that, from the patients' standpoint, much
good results from the voluntary notification of the disease ; but the facts
constitute a powerful argument in favour of Compulsory Notification
so that those in the early stages of the disease may benefit
from our work. I think, however, that under the present system
those who occupy the same dwelling as the sufferers are in a great
measure protected against the exposure to infection ; and a certain
amount of prevention of the spread of the disease is in my opinion
ample justification for our work.
The cases which are notified under the Voluntary system are not
notified at a sufficiently early stage to make them really suitable
patients for admission to a Sanatorium, and certainly not more than
ten per cent. of the cases which have ever been notified in Stoke
Newington would be admitted to existing Sanatoriums as favourable for
such treatment. Of those ten per cent., in my experience, few are able
or willing to leave home or to enter such an institution with the
necessary long absence from their families. Their stay would only be
a short one, and on their return to their conditions of increasing
poverty, their insanitary home conditions, and their occupation (which
has often played a part in favouring the disease from which they suffer),
they would soon relapse into their former condition and go from bad
to worse.
In the majority of cases notified in the Borough I have been able
to make suggestions for improving the existing arrangements and