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ultimately be found desirable, qua provision of hospital accommodation,
to make the Board a purely sanitary authority,
and to treat the Metropolis as one District, throwing every
expense to be incurred by the Managers on a metropolitan
common fund. I submitted a recommendation to this effect
to the Managers, in the early part of 1877, in a communication
subsequently reprinted in my Annual Report for
1876-7, (at page 14), under the heading, "Hospital accommodation
for the non-pauper infectious sick."
THE USE AND INFLUENCE OF HOSPITALS
FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
In my last Annual Report, (pp 47-65 inclusive) I discussed
under the above heading, the question raised by Mr.
W. H. Power's Report on Fulham Hospital, whether the
poison of small-pox can be transmitted unchanged through
the atmosphere so as to infect susceptible persons at considerable
distances? So momentous are the issues involved
in a correct solution of this question, which, practically,
Mr. Power has answered in the affirmative, that I thought
it my duty to state the grounds on which I had ventured to
doubt the accuracy of Mr. Power's conclusions, and to express
a hope that his views would not be generally accepted
as correct, without further investigation and more decisive
evidence than any as yet forthcoming.
The opportunity for such further investigation has already
arrived, and the duty of making it has devolved upon Mr.
Power.
In March, of the present year, an epidemic of small-pox,
commenced in the eastern districts, and the extension of
the disease westward, necessitated the reopening of Fulham
Hospital at the middle of May. Towards the end of June,
a considerable number of small-pox cases having occurred in
the Borough of Chelsea, the Local Government Board
directed Mr. Power to resume enquiry respecting the