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56
on the ground floor, under cover, so to say, of the
protecting boundary walls of the site.* It is the fact moreover,
that the ridge of the roof of the Fulham Hospital is about
on a level with the top of the wall separating Brompton Cemetery
from the West London Railway, so that, standing with one's back
to I field Road, on the raised terrace in the Cemetery, and
looking westwards towards the hospital, distant some 800 or
900 feet, nothing can be seen over the trees besides, the ridge
of the roof. The power of foliage in arresting the spread
of malaria is well known. Ifield Road is protected by a perfect
grove of trees, many evergreen, and by fences, yet it is
alleged by some that small-pox infection—vaulting over all impediments,
and carried by the wind, invades this street especially;
another theory, however, making the disease-germs rise gently,
under favoring conditions, when there is little air-movement,
to become deposited in all directions uniformly, even to a
distance of a mile, or a mile and a half, from the hospital.
Mr. Power favours the latter view, considering a still atmosphere
essential to the spread of small-pox infection ; but, as it is
almost needless to say, the majority of those who are opposed to
small-pox hospitals hold that wind is the chief factor in the
spread of the disease. Assuming this to be so, this further
difficulty meets us—and I proved the point before the Commissioners—that
whereas a south-west wind, which would carry
infection to the north-east, is four or five times as prevalent as a
north-west wind, which would carry infection to the south-east,
by far the larger amount of small-pox in I field Road, in 1881,
occurred to the south-east of the hospital. Are we therefore to
infer that small-pox travels against the wind? And, referring
again to the alleged protection of fences (in which connexion
Mr.Farr stated that small-pox had relatively ceased in a particular
street near Stockwell Hospital, after the completion of
another street interposed between it and the hospital), I may
*Dr. Munk, Physician to the Hospital, says "There is one point of great
importance: you should have no patients on the ground floor for
the sake of the surrounding neighbourhood." (4598—9.)