View report page

104
arrangements that may ultimately result from the proceedings of
the Asylums' Board, may be based on the two-fold principle of
free hospital treatment and payment out of a common sanitary
fund, the Metropolis being treated, for the purpose, as a single
district. A short Act would be necessary to give legal effect to
these views, which, if properly represented, would probably obtain
the concurrence of all parties. But to resume:—
The Managers having, (on October 25tli, as already stated),
adopted the report of the Committee for General Purposes, it was,
in due course, forwarded to the several Sanitary Authorities. The
report having been duly considered by your Vestry, a communication
was addressed to the Board, and to the Local Government
Board also, the nature of which is sufficiently indicated in the
subjoined communication, which was, at the same time, addressed
to the several Vestries of the Metropolis:—
"Sir,—I am instructed by the Kensington Vestry to state for
the information of your Vestiy that they have had under
consideration the Special Report of the General Purposes
Committee of the Metropolitan Asylums Board upon the
subject of the reception and treatment of non-pauper cases
of infectious disease in the Managers' Hospitals, and
that they have informed the Managers that they see no
reason to depart from the principles already adopted by
the Vestry, in 1878 and 1881, with reference to the said
subject, viz.:—
(a) That the Managers of the Metropolitan Asylums Board should be
empowered to make adequate provision of hospital accommodation
for infectious disease for all classes of the population in need of such
accommodation.
(b) That patients should be admitted into the Managers' Hospitals upon
certificates signed by any duly qualified medical practitioner.
(c) That as the hospitals of the Managers have been established for the
common good at the public cost, no compulsory payment should be
exacted from persons whom the Sanitary Authority may deem it
necessary or expedient to remove to the hospitals for the purpose of
isolation.