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48
Whatever the grounds 011 which other sanitary authorities declined
the overtures of the Managers, the grounds of your
Vestry's action are well known; for 011 several occasions, within the
last eight years, the subject of hospital provision for the infectious
sick had been fully considered, and principles, adopted in 1878,
before the passing of the Poor Law Act, 1879, were deliberately
reaffirmed in 1881 after the passing of that Act—to the following
effect, viz., That the Managers should be the hospital authority
for all London ; that the certificate of any registered medical man
should suffice for the admittance into hospital of any person
suffering from an infectious disease ; that no payment for relief
in hospital should be enforced from the patient, and that the cost
of the hospitals should be defrayed out of a Common Sanitary
Fund, the Metropolis being treated as a single district for
this purpose. It may be here mentioned that in the same
year (1881) a Conference of Sanitary Authorities was held
in the Town Hall, at which resolutions to the same effect
were unanimously adopted by the representatives of 30 out
of the 39 local authorities exercising sanitary powers within the
Metropolis, and that, at about the same time, the Society of
Medical Officers of Health affirmed the same principles.
This being the state of the case it would have been inconsistent
to agree to make hospital treatment of the infectious sick
the subject of a local charge, and it was therefore resolved, in
replying to the Managers' communication of October, 1884, to
state that your Vestry " saw no reason to depart from the
principles" above set out, and to " invite the Managers to
consider the greater simplicity and superior advantages of the
plan of throwing the entire expenditure incurred by the Board in
the hospital treatment of infectious disease upon a Metropolitan
Fund, as compared with that of contracts with individual Vestries
and District Boards, as proposed, under the provisions of the
Poor Law Act of 1879." The desirability of legislation to give
effect to the alternative plan was also suggested.
A communication of like purport, moreover, was addressed to
the Local Government Board and to each of the Sanitary