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40
Co-operation.
Very little is done in the matter by voluntary societies but what little
there is, is due to the Local Mcdical Societies and the National Association for
the Prevention of Consumption.
Other Remarks.
The small number of notifications seems to be almost universal where the
method is voluntary. Indeed, some authorities frankly state that voluntary
notification has been a "failure" and "disappointing," and practically confined
to the poorer classes and moribund patients.
One authority places the advantages as chiefly educational. Another
complains that the instructions given on the official leaflet, are wilfully discarded
at home; while one believes that notification itself will not be effective
unless provision is simultaneously made for treatment in hospital.
Urban Districts.
As in the case of Metropolitan and other Boroughs, here, too, the same
facts are disclosed and the same inferences follow. There seems, however, to
be a larger consensus of opinion that voluntary notification has been a failure.
One Council (Wigston) advises and practices the education of school children
in the home hygienic measures, which are necessary for coping with the evil.
Rural Districts.
In the Rural Districts where voluntary notification has been adopted, the
authorities are unanimous that it has been a failure.
General Summary and Conclusions.
When we consider that in London alone, between 7,000 and 8,000 persons
(of whom a large majority are adults in the prime of life) die every year from
Consumption, and that the mortality in the male sex is about 40 per cent.
greater than in the female sex, it is to be regretted that so little has been
accomplished as the result of the efforts of those authorities who have
attempted to grapple with this infectious disease.
It must be at once conceded that the experience of nearly all the Medical
Officers of Health, is that the Medical Practitioners have not availed themselves
of the opportunities offered to them by the Sanitary Authorities in the