View report page

57
Order of the Local Government Board, relatingto admission
of patients, the certificate of a district or workhouse medical
officer, and the order of a relieving officer, or a master of a
workhouse, are alone recognized. Although my efforts in
this direction appeared to produce little result, the discussidn
to which they gave rise, from time to time, was doing good,
and paving the way to a better state of things. In our
own parish, as a result, a practice grew up, with the tacit approval
of the guardians, of accepting a properly authenticated
certificate of any registered medical man, as evidence of the
nature of an infectious illness, without waiting to obtain the
confirming certificate of the district medical officer. By
this plan several hours were sometimes saved in effecting
the removal of a patient.
A still more notable step, in the same direction, but
equally informal, had just been taken by the Ambulance Committee
of the Asylums Board, to which I cannot refer without
unfeigned satisfaction, as it concedes even more than I
had ventured to ask, and will bring about the removal of infectious
cases with the utmost attainable rapidity. The committee,
determined that no avoidable delay should take place,
have resolved to receive any case of small-pox or fever into a
Board-Hospital, upon the direct application of any duly registered
medical practitioner, and without a previous order
from a relieving officer. Applications are required to be
made at the chief offices of the Board, Norfolk Street, Strand,
by telegram, during the hours telegraph offices are open, on
week-days only. The offices are in telephonic communication
with all the hospitals, and immediately on receipt of a telegram
an order is sent to the Superintendent of the Ambulance
Station of the district, who, within a few minutes, despatches
an ambulance with a nurse to remove the patient.
The details of the scheme are set out in the "Regulations
of the Board for the removal of cases of small-pox and fever
by the Land and River Ambulances," (June 21,1884). Information
of cases so admitted is sent to the Clerk of the
E