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99
the Diseases Prevention (Metropolis) Act, 1883, medical relief in
the hospitals was depauperised, thus completely justifying my views
in regard to the matter.
The above enlightened step for promoting the removal of infectious
cases, as a means of protecting the community, is not the
only one for which your Vestry as Sanitary Authority, and the
parishioners at large, are indebted to the Guardians. The Asylum
Board's Hospitals, as is well known, are poor law institutions,
although, as mentioned above, admittance into them no longer
pauperises the recipients of assistance, few of the patients,
moreover, being of the pauper class. For some years, I had
contended that the medical certificate of a duly registered
practitioner should be accepted as evidence of the nature of an
infectious disease, (small-pox, scarlet fever, &c.),in the case of a
patient proposed to be removed to one of the hospitals, and that
the medical officer of health should be authorized to give the
necessary " order" for the reception of the patient. In the Order
of the Local Government Board, relating to the admission of
patients, the certificate of a district or workhouse medical officer, and
the order of a relieving officer, or of a master of a workhouse, are
alone recognised. Although my efforts in this direction appeared to
produce little result, the discussion 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, for instance, a practice grew up,
with the tacit sanction of the Guardians, of accepting a properly
authenticated certificate of any registered medical man, as
evidence of the nature of an infectious illness, and the patient was
removed without the delay that would have been occasioned by
waiting to obtain the confirming certificate of the district medical
officer. By this plan several hours were sometimes saved in
effecting the removal.
A still more notable step, in the same direction, but equally
informal, was taken in June, 1884, by the Ambulance Committee
of the Asylums Board, a step to which I referred in my last report
with unfeigned satisfaction, as it conceded even more than I had
ventured to ask, and had brought about the removal of infectious