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as already intimated, for anticipating any great increase in the
demand, inasmuch as the ever increasing success attending the
efforts of the Managers to promote the speedy removal of patients
from their homes may he expected to have a tendency to diminish
the prevalence of disease.
NORTH-WESTERN (HAMPSTEAD) HOSPITAL.
This hospital was closed on the 30th January, and has not
been re-opened. It was arranged at the time of closure that
enteric fever cases arising in the district should be removed to the
Western Hospital; but effect could not be given to this arrangement
owing to the demands made on the "Western Hospital for the
admittance of scarlet-fever patients. The long-continued closure
of the North-Western Hospital and the closure of the Southwestern
Hospital affords striking evidence of the remarkable
freedom of the Metropolis from "fever." The probable future
application of this (North-Western) hospital has already been
alluded to in the preceding section.
WESTERN HOSPITAL.
The Managers have considerably improved this hospital by
the execution of works necessary for the adaptation of two of the
fever wards for the more convenient and, economical treatment of
the different classes of fever, and, for the provision of isolationwards
for cases of doubtful or faulty diagnosis. It has been found
necessary to reconstruct the drainage, which was unsatisfactory,
having been put in without due care and consideration when the
hospital was hurriedly run up in 1877 to meet the demands for
accommodation for small-pox patients. The hospital has been in use
throughout the year, and in the latter half was almost exclusively
restricted to scarlet fever. So great, in fact, was the pressure
arising from the prevalence of that disease, in some of the parishes
and unions allocated to the Hospital, that arrangements were made
for conveying cases arising in certain of these districts to the