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47
THE USE AND INFLUENCE OF HOSPITALS FOR
INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
Under the above title, Dr. Thorne Thorne, now the Assistant
Medical Officer to the Local Government Board, has prepared
a report containing the results of an inquiry made by him in
1880-1, at the instance of the Board. The report contains a
great amount of information that will prove of value to sanitary
authorities, and is the fruit of inspection of some seventy
hospitals, in use by urban, by rural, and by port sanitary
authorities, of every variety of locality, size, and construction,"
including some that were " ill-placed, or on an altogether insufficient
scale, or badly planned, doing duty in default of better,
though of flimsy material and hurried construction."
Dr. Thorne endeavoured to learn what influences for evil, as regards
the neighbourhoods surrounding the hospitals, had resulted
from their use for the isolation of cases of infectious diseases,
and it is satisfactory to know that he has " nothing to record
of fevers, scarlet, typhus, enteric, or other infectious diseases,
spread from the hospital, as such, to its neighbourhood."
In respect of small-pox, however, he has " recorded two
instances where infection had appeared to spread from a hospital
in a row of houses, in a way that suggested conveyance of
infectious matter through the atmosphere rather than by means
of persons and things."* In many other instances Dr. Thorne
heard of no extension of infection to neighbouring streets and
houses, in spite of the best inquiries that he and officers of
health before him could make.
" When Dr. Thorne's inquiry was planned, it was not intended
that it should extend to the Metropolis. This limitation
was made partly for the reason that the circumstances of London
were expected to be so intricate that the influence of
hospitals on the population would be specially difficult to
recognise .... representations, however, were received
* " The hospitals in question were buildings which ought never to have been
used by a Sanitary Authority for the isolation of cases of infections diseases,
forming part, as each one did, of a row of dwelling houses."