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and the General Purposes Committee of the Metropolitan Asylums
Board; this Board having, by the Diseases Prevention (Metropolis)
Act, 1883, been constituted a "Local Authority" under the
provisions of the Diseases Prevention Act, 1885. Previously to
the said meeting the Committee had addressed a communication to
each of the Medical Officers submitting questions connected with
provision of hospitals, hand ambulances, notification of cases,
disinfection of excreta, &c., to which ultimately a collective
reply was sent by the Society of Medical Officers of Health.
One of the objects of the Act of 1883 was "to make
better provision, as regards the Metropolis, for the isolation and
treatment of persons suffering from cholera," the Board being
by it enabled to utilise their buildings, ambulances, and staff
in discharging the duties imposed by both Acts. Immediately
after the passing of the Act the Managers of the
Asylums Board 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
hospitals, ambulances, &c., and to arrange for the temporary use
of other suitable buildings, or of small plots of land whereon to
erect huts, to be under the charge of their own officers, but they
also negotiated arrangements with the governing bodies of general
hospitals, and with the several Beards of Guardians, to secure
whatever accommodation in the hospitals, the infirmaries, and the
workhouses could be made available for the reception of patients
in the infected districts, or for the accommodation of the ordinary
inmates of such establishments able to be transferred to
cholera-free districts, so as to provide room for the sick in the
vacated buildings in cholera-stricken districts. Many of the
Boards of Guardians, and of the governing bodies of voluntary
hospitals, signified their willingness to assist in making needful
provision of accommodation, so that, on the whole, the Metropolis
would have been found better prepared than in any previous
epidemic had cholera unhappily reached our shores; and the same
observation holds good now. The design in the proposed arrange-