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required, and would be taken, should the disease this year extend
to, or approach in the direction of, this country.
The Board issued, in the first place, two "Orders," with a
covering explanatory letter for the guidance of Port Sanitary
Authorities, who of necessity constitute the first line of defence,
and subsequently they communicated with all other sanitary
authorities throughout the kingdom. At the instance of the
President a conference was held between the Medical Officer of
the Board and the Metropolitan Medical Officers of Health, the
conclusions arrived at being, that, to safeguard the metropolis
against Cholera, "increased attention should be devoted by
sanitary authorities and their officers to the ordinary means for
improving the sanitary condition of the several districts," and that
"the attention of the Local Government Board should be called
to the necessity of careful supervision of the sources of water
supply in the rivers, and of the storage reservoirs, &c.," on the
ground that if cholera should be imported into the metrojiolis it
might be spread, as 011 a former occasion, through the agency of
the water companies.
The "Diseases Prevention (Metropolis) Act," of which I
gave a full account in my annual report for 1882 (page 66), has
for its object to make "better provision as regards the metropolis
for the isolation and treatment of persons suffering from cholera
and other infectious diseases." Section 2 constitutes the Managers
of the Asylums Board, equally with the Vestries and District
Boards, a "Local Authority" under the Diseases Prevention
Act, 1855, and enables them to utilize their buildings, ambulances,
staff, &c., for the execution of powers and duties conferred or
imposed on them under both the Acts. Immediately after the
passing of the Act the Managers undertook to provide a limited
amount of temporary hospital accommodation for patients of both,
sexes, and for the whole metropolitan area, irrespective of
parochial boundaries. They not merely agreed to utilize any of
their buildings, ambulances, &c., and to arrange for the temporary
use of empty buildings, or of small plots of land whereon to erect
huts, to be under the charge of their ow n officers, but they also