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happiest results, not a single case having since been prevented
from going to hospital, on the ground of inability or unwillingness to
pay for maintenance and treatment. As I had always held that
the removal to hospital of the non-isolated infectious sick, at
whatever cost to the public, could be justified on economical
grounds, it was a source of satisfaction to me to know that this
view was shared by the Guardians equally with your Vestry.
Practically, moreover, nothing is lost in money through the
enlightened action of the Guardians; for, as the result of an
inquiry made in view of the Conference of Sanitary Authorities
held at the Town Hall, in March, 1881, I ascertained that no
more than £60 had been received by some twenty Boards of
Guardians, in respect of 79 patients only who contributed towards
their own maintenance, out of 3,100, the number of patients
removed to hospitals in little less than one year. Objection had
been raised to the principle of “free hospital treatment,” for
which I contended, on the ground that many patients contributed
towards their maintenance a sum which was considerable in the
aggregate, and it was said that patients who were able to pay
should be made to pay. Even had the pecuniary question been
of the supposed magnitude, sanitarians, who know the terrible
consequences that so often result from the home-treatment of
infectious diseases, when the sick cannot be isolated, would have
been ready to justify a sacrifice in money rather than imperil life.
It was more difficult to satisfy the representatives of the ratepayers—those
who hold the strings of the public purse—that the
policy advocated was a wise policy; but the facts and the figures
which I laid before the Conference brought conviction, and it was
resolved unanimously, “that payment for the assistance given in
hospitals to persons removed thereto for isolation, by the Sanitary
or the Poor Law Authority, should not be enforced,” and, “that
the giving of such assistance should not entail on the recipient the
loss of any social or political status.” The Hospitals Commission,
moreover, recommended (in 1882), that "it is desirable in the
public interest to attract to the hospitals, even by the bribe of
gratuitous treatment, all who will go thither." By the passing of