View report page

46
Eastern (Homerton) Hospital or the South-Eastern (Deptford)
Hospital, and ultimately the Managing Committee had to deny
admittance to enteric fever altogether.
The Hospital Committee taking into consideration the possibility
that they may be called upon at any time to admit small-pox
patients, and deeming the existing accommodation unsuitable, have
proposed (May 1887) to the Managers to build two small hospitals
upon a plan suggested by Dr. Burdon Sanderson, a member of
the Royal Commission of 1882, with the object of purifying the
infected air passing from the hospital, by burning it, so as to
minimise the risk of infection being conveyed to persons outside
the building. The proposal, which does not appear to have been
very favourably entertained, was referred to the General Purposes
Committee. Dr. Sanderson's plan is illustrated opposite page 310
in the Report of the Commission.
HOSPITAL SHIPS.
The Hospital Ships were open throughout the year, but happily
there was little occasion for them during the greater part of it,
when admittance of small-pox patients was limited to the Atlas.
Great efforts were made by a section of the Managers—acting in
conformity with advice tendered by the Local Government Board—
to close the ships and to treat sporadic cases of small-pox in the
Town Hospitals. It was thought that money might be saved by
taking this step—an opinion for which there does not seem to be
much foundation. But the majority of the Managers, having regard
to the doubtful state of the question as to the causation of outbreaks
of disease in the vicinity of small-pox hospitals, were firm
in their resolution to continue the practice of removing patients
to the Ships, a practice the beneficial results of which are (as
I think) apparent in the remarkable reduction in the number of
cases and the practical freedom, during many months, of the Metropolis
from the disease. Granting the relation, which I believe to
exist, between the removal of small-pox patients out of London and
the comparative freedom of London from small-pox, it cannot be