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hands of the Asylums Board. There are few private ambulances,
and if, for example, a patient suffering with small-pox desires to
he removed to the Highgate Hospital, or if a patient suffering with
diphtheria, or enteric fever, desires to be removed to a general
hospital, there is great difficulty in obtaining means of carriage. I
represented these facts to the Asylums Board in December, and submitted
for their consideration "whether it would not be practicable
to place disengaged ambulances at the service of the medical
profession and of Medical Officers of Health, for the conveyance of
such cases either with or without payment?" The cases, I said,
were "few, and this is the cause of the difficulty, for if the cases
were numerous, demand would create supply, ambulances would
be provided," and the difficulty would cease. The Managers, in
their reply, stated that they "are not yet in a position to undertake
the removal of any cases of infectious disease beyond those
which are to be received into Hospitals under" their own control.
I do not doubt but that the Managers will, in course of time,
recognize the desirableness, and I may say, the propriety, of doing
what I suggested.
Wharves.—By section 6 of the Diseases Prevention (Metropolis)
Act, 1883, the Managers were empowered to obtain land,
with approaches, &c., for three wharves or landing places within
the metropolis and one beyond the metropolis, to facilitate the
conveyance of the sick to land or ship hospitals down the river.
Effect has been given to this enactment by purchases of land as
follows:—A site at Rotherhithe ("Acorn Wharf"), for the service
of the southern districts of the metropolis; a site at Blackwall
(Brown's Wharf), for the service of the north-east districts; and a
site near Wandsworth Bridge ("Sullivan's Wharf"), to serve as
a transfer depôt for the use of the western districts, including
Kensington. These wharves are in future to be designated
"South Wharf," "North Wharf," and "West Wharf." The
land at Long Reach, off which the hospital ships are moored, is
the fourth, or extra-metropolitan, site. At each wharf a pier has
been, or will be, erected, from alongside which patients will be taken
from the land ambulances to the steamers, and at which