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“abstain generally from taking any steps for obtaining payment in
“cases sent to the Metropolitan District Fever and Small.pox
“Hospitals."
The carrying out of these instructions has been attended with
the best possible results, for since they were issued I have not
heard of a single case prevented from going to hospital, on
grounds of inability or unwillingness to pay for maintenance
and treatment. Having always held that the removal to hospital
of the non.isolated infectious sick, at whatever cost to the
public, is justifiable on strictly economical grounds, it is a
source of satisfaction to me to know that this view is shared by
the Guardians, equally with your Vestry. Practically, moreover,
very little is lost in money by the enlightened action of
the Guardians, for, as the result of an enquiry made in view of
the Conference of Sanitary Authorities held at the Town Hall
in March, 1881, I ascertained that less than £60 had been
received, by some twenty Boards of Guardians, in respect of 79
patients only, out of 3,100, removed by them to hospitals in a
little less than one year. Objection had been raised to the
principle of "free hospital treatment," on the ground that many
patients contributed towards their maintenance a sum considerable
in the aggregate, and that patients able to pay should be
made to pay. Even had this been the case—and I have shown
that it is not so—sanitarians, who know the terrible consequences
that so often result from the home treatment of infectious
diseases, when the sick cannot be isolated, would have been
ready to justify a sacrifice in money rather than imperil life. It
was more difficult to satisfy the representatives of the ratepayers—those
who hold the strings of the public purse, of the
good policy of such a course, but the facts and figures I submitted
to the Conference brought conviction, and it was resolved
unanimously “that payment for the assistance given in hospitals
to persons removed thereto for isolation, by the Sanitary or the
Poor Law Authority, should not be enforced," and “that the
giving of such assistance should not entail on the recipient the
loss of any social or political status."