View report page

67
3.—Any person can apply to the Officers of the Public Health Department
for advice and as to the available means of assistance.
4.—The families of cases certified are visited for the purpose of inquiry
and advice, where necessary, by the Woman Inspector or her
assistant.
5. —Contacts, suspects, and susceptibles are given introduction cards to-
the St. Pancras Dispensary for the purpose of medical examination,
diagnosis, and report.
6.—The treatment of patients is referred to (a) Medical Practitioners,
(h) Poor Law Authorities, (r) Hospitals and Public Dispensaries,
(d) Private Dispensaries, Clubs, &c., and (e) to various Philanthropic
Agencies.
Provision for isolation of advanced cases of Consumption. The Council have on
previous occasions urged that the Metropolitan Asylums Board should provide
sanatoria and hospital accommodation for consumptives, and en the 13th July,
1910, thev resolved that a representation be made to the Metropolitan AsylumsBoard
urging them to take immediate steps to provide a central home for
incurable consumptive cases.
In reply to this representation a communication was received from the
Metropolitan Asylums Board on the 10th July, 1910, pointing out that the
Managers had no power without the consent of the Local Government Board
to make provision for sanatoria for consumptives, and that although the
subject had been frequently discussed, and several communications had been
addressed to the Local Government Board on the matter, the Managers had
hitherto received from the Board no official indication of the view they took
thereon.
Your Committee again considered the serious disability under which London
is endeavouring to combat tuberculosis, having regard to the fact that there
are no means of isolating far advanced cases. It is well known that these
cases are the most infectious and the most difficult to nurse, and to prevent
the spread of infection, accommodation for such cases is the most urgent of all.
If such accommodation were provided, the difficulty experienced in dealing
with the worst cases of this disease would vanish, inasmuch as, if the consulting
officer certified that a case was unfit for a sanatorium, and the medical
attendant or consulting officer certified that it, was fit for an " incurable "
institution and urgently required to be removed thereto, insured persons in an
advanced stage of consumption would feel that they had been provided with a
sanatorium for incurables to which they could be removed by the Medical
Officer of Health, if without proper lodging or accommodation for their
disease.
In regard to the statement made by the Metropolitan Asylums Board that
they have no power to make provision for cases of consumption without the
consent of the Local Government Board, since then, on the 18th February
1911, the Local Government Board made an Order by which they directed
that the Asylums Board might, with their consent in writing, appropriate any
of the fever or small-pox hospitals, or any part thereof, for the reception and
treatment of such classes of poor persons as may be specified in the said