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From the date of the Hospital being opened, until 1933, the
major users were Southgate and Friern Barnet. In 1933 an agreement
was entered into with the Tottenham Borough Council whereby
Tottenham patients were admitted to the Isolation Hospital, the
Tottenham Council sharing in the membership of the newly constituted
Hospital Management Committee. In 1934 Friern Barnet
patients ceased to arrive at our Isolation Hospital, following the
incorporation of Friern Barnet into the Hornsey, Finchley, Wood
Green Joint Hospital scheme. Tottenham patients continued to be
admitted in large numbers to our Hospital, so far as accommodation
permitted, until the end of 1946.
From 1902 until 31st December, 1946, a grand total of 11,208
patients were treated in our Isolation Hospital. The areas from
which these patients were admitted were as follows:
Southgate 5,229
Tottenham 4,492
Friern Barnet 1,172
Service Patients 193
Other Districts 122
The highest number of patients treated in any year was 571
(in 1934), while the highest number of Southgate patients treated
in any year was 287 (in 1914).
These figures are impressive, but they cannot put into words
the volume of work carried out at the Hospital during the 45 years
of its existence; nor can they hope to make known the amount of
suffering and legacies of ill-health which the Hospital was privileged
to prevent.
We were always proud of the fact that, although a small
institution with admittedly limited facilities, we maintained an upto-date
outlook on the treatment of infectious diseases; we are
equally proud of the fact that our complication, cross-infection and
death rates compared favourably with those of any hospital in the
country. It was a great personal loss to me when my remaining
touch with purely curative medicine was lost. The Hospital
allowed me to forget for a time that a Medical Officer of Health is
now very largely an administrative officer, with at most a medical
background. There is no joy in medicine like the thrill of saving
an individual patient, of knowing that the skill and attention
provided at the bedside by nurse and doctor alike, have prevented
an immediate or remote tragedy. But the change-over was
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