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Board should have power, in the interests of the community, to
authorise their removal, as in the ease of fever. In my opinion it is
purely as a preventive authority that the Metropolitan Asylums Board
should be concerned with Tuberculosis. Although the provision for
the Sanatorium treatment of the disease is an indispensable provision
in the crusade against Consumption, that provision should be made
apart from the Metropolitan Asylums Board. When it is considered
what the disease costs the country, attacking as it does such large
numbers of those in the wage-earning periods of life, there can be no
question that any reasonable expenditure would be justified, on
economic lines alone.
Until such provision is made the value of our local preventivework
is seriously reduced; but before even this can be made to realise
the best results it is absolutely necessary that the notification of the
disease should be made compulsory. It is nothing short of an anomaly
that a disease sueh as Erysipelas, which rarely occasions death, and
which is communicable only to a slight extent, should be a disease
compulsorily notifiable, whereas Consumption, which is at the present
time causing a thousand-fold the ravages of Erysipelas, should remain
non-notifiable. We cannot go to the homes of the people, give advice,
and see that the advice is carried out in the interests of the sufferer
and others, unless we know where the infected homes are, and the
only means of knowing that is by the compulsory notification of the
disease.
CEREBROSPINAL FEVER.
This disease occasions serious mortality in America, and in certain
localities on the Continent of Europe, but fortunately in this country
it is of rare occurrence. There is, however, reason to believe that
the disease may be less uncommon in the United Kingdom than has
hitherto been supposed; and during the past year the identification of
a case in London and of several cases in Northamptonshire occasioned
some alarm. Happily, however, there was 110 serious extension of
the infection, and indeed it is by no means certain that the disease is.
spread by direct infection from person to person. In our present