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Sir,—It is clear that nothing is to be expected from the medical
officer of St. George's, Hanover Square, concerning the point I raised
in the British Medical Journal of September 24th, and I do not
wish to take up your space further than to make clear the point at
issue. Dr. Corfield is unable to go outside the strict letter of the
Notification Act, and maintains that no matter how many medical
practitioners are called in to see a case of infectious disease, every
one of them is bound to notify. "As a matter of fact," he says,
"if only one certifies it to the medical officer of health, the latter is
quite satisfied, as he does not want more than one certificate of one
case, but if neither of them certifies he is bound to report them all."
But it is not a question of the satisfaction of the medical officer of
health. The question is, What is right? and the right is determined
in a new Act by the administrators of that Act. Most Acts, if we
abide by their letter, are, in places, doubtful in their meaning, or
often enough absurd; and in this case I maintain that to compel
three or four individuals to notify, when only one certificate is required,
is absurd, and is not the intention of the Act, whatever the
wording may be. I further maintain that inasmuch as the medical
officers of health are the administrators of the Act, they are not
"bound to summon everyone who may happen to be called in to see
a case of infectious disease." The one in charge of the case is the
one who is responsible, and no one else; and the medical officers of
health ought so to work the Act. How am I to know who is the
medical officer in twenty or thirty parishes not my own? Moreover,
I know, as I said in my former letter, that a large number of medical
officers of health interpret the Act in this liberal spirit. So they tell
me, and there ought to be some uniformity.—I am, etc.,
October 3rd. James J. Goodhart.
Sir,—The English language as she is spoke, and, still more, as
she is wrote in Acts of Parliament, is a living supple thing not always
safely to be construed according to the published rules of the grammarian,
any more than the individual's psychology is to be learned
from a textbook of anatomy. As a humble student of my mother
tongue, I venture to dissent from that interpretation which Professor
Corfield places upon the clause quoted by him from the Infectious
Diseases (Notification) Act, 1889. As he says: "The words of the
Act are perfectly clear; every medical practitioner attending on or
called in to visit shall forthwith send to the medical officer of
health a certificate etc." ; and the grammatical pedant is apt
therefrom to conclude that each and every of the whole number of
medical men who attend or are called in to see such a patient at any