View report page

61
of cases sent "direct" to the Ship Hospitals (791 between June
and September), and irrespective also of cases admitted at the
Highgate Hospital, which was in active operation throughout the
year, and contained more patients at any one time than any of the
Asylums Board hospitals in London.
By way of conclusion it may be mentioned that the Asylums
Board published in January, 1885, a Return, showing the admissions
at the several Hospitals, from the 30 single parishes and
unions, during the quarter ended December 31st, 1884. Table L
(page 75) is based upon that return, and in it the names of the
parishes in which hospitals are situated are printed in dark type.
It must be remembered, however, that a hospital in one district
may be so situated with regard to another district as to exercise
an equal or even a greater influence on that other district. The
South-Eastern Hospital, for instance, situated at Deptford in the
Greenwich district, and among market gardens originally, lies
just outside Camberwell, off the Old Kent Road, and at some
distance from Greenwich proper; its influence for evil, whatever
this may be, would be as marked upon Camberwell as upon
Deptford or Greenwich. For this reason, therefore, the names
of the parishes, &c., adjacent to hospitals are printed in italics, in
Table L, in which, moreover, the population of the several districts
at the Census of 1881 is given.
THE USE AND INFLUENCE OF HOSPITALS FOR
INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
Under the above heading I have referred in my two last
annual reports to the interesting questions raised in Mr. W. H.
Power's well-known report on Fulham Hospital, viz., whether
small-pox can be spread by aerial dissemination of infectious
("particulate") matter from small-pox Hospitals, and whether
such dissemination is, as Mr. Power alleges, the cause of the
admittedly excessive proportion of small-pox cases in the vicinity
of the hospitals, as compared with other parts of the parishes in
in which the hospitals are situated? I say "other parts" of the