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87
cents will disembark on their return home from the Ship Hospitalsor
the Camp. Under the arrangements matured by the Managers,
the treatment of a small-pox patient may be said to commence at the
moment of removal, for he is taken charge of at the bedside by a
skilled nurse, who attends upon him in the ambulance and in the
steamer. All patients, moreover, are seen by a medical officer at the
wharf before embarcation, so that in any case of doubtful or
inaccurate diagnosis, the patient can be sent home or remitted for
observation to an isolation ward at one of the land hospitals.
Hitherto, the service so carefully organised has worked well,
and it must be allowed to be a great improvement on that
which, in the course of a short time, it will have entirely
superseded. Large as are the expenses being, or to be, incurred, it
will be felt that the Managers exercised a sound discretion in making
provision for all contingencies, quietly and systematically, while as
yet there was no serious epidemic ; for they were found prepared,
and so panic was avoided, when the anticipated emergency arose.
It goes without saying that the Managers have been hampered,
more or less, at every stage of their proceedings, through local
opposition, based generally on fears that hospitals, ambulancestations,
and wharves, alike, must needs depreciate the value of
adjacent property and injuriously affect the health of the
inhabitants. Subject to proper precautions being adopted, I do
not think the latter danger is likely to arise and the first-named
fear will probably turn out to be ill-founded.
COMPULSORY NOTIFICATION OF
INFECTIOUS DISEASES.
In several of my Annual Reports I have referred to the need
of legislation to secure immediate information to Sanitary
Authorities of the occurrence of illness from some of the more
dangerous infectious diseases, and in the Report for 1880 (page
44), I gave a full account of the steps that had been taken by means
of legislation, in the shape of “Local Acts,” to secure such
notification in certain provincial towns and boroughs. The
subject was continued in my Report for 1881 (page 40), and I