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19
any occasion in either case why another room should not have been
employed for the reception of visitors, or for the use of healthy
members of the family.
Two children were removed to hospital under Justice's order
(Sec. 26, The Sanitary Act, 1866). They were living with two
other children and their parents—the father was a stable-man—in
a single room. The sick children had been attended by a medical
practitioner who keeps a "Provident" Dispensary, and who certified
that their removal to hospital would be "improper" and was
"unnecessary." But as there were numerous other persons living
in the same house, adults and children, I could not adopt this
view of the case ; and, accordingly I took the requisite measures to
remove the children without loss of time.
The law allows a magistrate to make an "Order" for the removal
of a person to a hospital at the cost of the "nuisance Authority,"
on a certificate signed by a duly qualified medical practitioner, and
on proof that the sufferer is "without proper lodging or accommodation:"
This power would be more often exercised, but that it
appears to have been decided that the fitness of the lodging or
accommodation should be judged by the wants of the sufferer,
rather than with any reference to the safety of the remaining
inmates of the same house. It would be far better were it otherwise,
as the spread of disease from one family to another in a house,
without actual contact of sick with healthy people, is of frequent
occurrence, so that the lodging or accommodation of the sick was
obviously not "proper," judged from the standpoint of the healthy.*
In several instances the last child to be attacked in a family died,
and these deaths were strictly preventable and would have been
prevented, had the parents taken good advice and allowed the
children first attacked to be removed to the hospital.
The great majority of the sick naturally were children, and
many of them had been in attendance at school until they were
taken ill. Some cases were reported by Officers of the School
* This subject is dealt with fully in the section on Compulsory Notification
of Infectious Diseases.