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held on the 16th July) that by the circulation of these documents an
essential service has been rendered by your Vestry to the cause of
sanitary reform, the light thereby thrown upon the whole question
having "smoothed away every difficulty" and led, in the course of half
an hour, to the unanimous adoption of the following resolution, viz.:
"That in the opinion of this Conference many almost insurmountable
obstacles present themselves to the carrying out by the Vestries
and District Boards of the Metropolis of the powers conferred
upon them by the 37th sec. of the Sanitary Act 1866. And it is
further of opinion that it is desirable that provision should be
made by Act of Parliament for one Authority acting for the
whole Metropolis to provide hospital accommodation for nonpaupor
persons suffering; from infectious disease, and is farther
of opinion that such authority should be as far as possible
representative."
A further resolution to the effect
"That a copy of the foregoing Resolution be sent to each of the
Vestries and District Boards of the Metropolis, with an invitation
to them to state whether they agree therewith,"
was also unanimously adopted, and the Conference adjourned to
a day in October, to be subsequently fixed by the Limehouse Board
of Works, for the consideration of the replies of the Yestries and
District Boards, and to determine on the steps necessary to be taken
to carry into effect, bv legislative action, the views embodied in
the first resolution.
FULHAM SMALL-POX HOSPITAL.
In the month of March the Metropolitan Asylum District
Board opened a hospital in the parish of Fulham, west of the
railway and south of the West Brompton Station, for the treatment
of infectious diseases. From that time to the present whenever
there has been any increase in the number of small-pox
cases in the south-west corner of the parish alarm has been
occasioned by the suspicion that the hospital in some occult
way may have been the cause of the spread of the disease.
Excepting in one case,* where there appeared to be a probability
that a female might have been indirectly infected by her
daughter, a servant at the hospital, viz. by conlayium conveyed in
body clothing, no case has been put forward to give colour to
the suspicion which has been somewhat generally entertained,
principally owing to the injudicious support it has received,
without any scientific evidence, from a small number of professional
men.
That an infectious disease hospital might easily become a source
of danger to the locality in which it is placed, viz. by the
*Vide Monthly Report, No. 4 (April 3, 1878), page 27; and No. 6 (May 1),
page 39, for the particulars of the case.