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66
COMPULSORY NOTIFICATION OF INFECTIOUS
DISEASES.
In several of my Annual Reports I have referred to the need
of legislation to secure immediate information to Sanitary
Authorities of the occurrence of illness from some of the more
dangerous infectious diseases; and in the Report for 1880 (page
44) I gave a full account of the steps that had been taken by
means of legislation, in the shape of "Local Acts," to secure
such notification in certain provincial towns and boroughs. The
subject was continued in my Report for 1881 (page 40), and 1
stated that, as the desirability of the extension of such
legislation in the shape of a Public Act was generally
acknowledged, it only remained for the Government to
introduce a measure for the purpose of securing notification.
In the last Session of Parliament, several Private
Bills, providing for Police or Sanitary Regulations, were introduced
at the instance of Provincial Corporations, and referred
to a Select Committee, of which Mr. Sclater-Booth, an exPresident
of the Local Government Board, was the Chairman.
In their Report on the "Sanitary Regulations "the Committee
stated, with respect to "Notification," that they had "little
difficulty in forming the opinion that the time had arrived when
provisions of law on this subject may be sanctioned, at least in
the more important Urban Sanitary Districts." Encouraged
by this report Mr. Hastings, who was a member of the Committee,
with Sir Trevor Lawrence, Dr. Farquharson and Mr.
Brinton, have recently introduced a Bill "To provide for the
better Notification of Infectious Diseases," drawn on the lines
sketched by the Committee in a "Model Clause," which will be
found at page 44 of my last Annual Report. Without entering
into details, I may state that the Bill proposes to throw upon the
householder, and upon the medical attendant, the duty of notifying
cases to the Medical Officer of Health—the so called "dual
system." The gentlemen named are active members of the
Social Science Association, the Health Section of which body