View report page

93
ment Board, in his Annual Report for 1881-2, had expressed
his views on the subject in the following terms:—
"Seeing how greatly the usefulness of sanitary action in respect of infectious
disease must depend upon early knowledge of its presence, I have had
no hesitation in advising that this power (i. e., of obtaining immediate information
of the existence of infectious disease in a house) might properly be
possessed by any Sanitary Authority who wanted it, and who, having made
adequate arrangements for securing isolation and disinfection for the district,
was prepared to put to effective use the knowledge which a system of diseasenotification
would afford."
In the same year (1882) the British Medical Association, at
its Jubilee Meeting, held at Worcester, passed a resolution in
favour of compulsory notification, and the Hospitals Commission
endorsed the principle in their Report, in the following
terms:—
"We think that every person suffering from an infectious disease, or
those in charge of him, or, if these neglect their duty, the occupier of the
house in which the sick person is residing, or, if he is a pauper, his medical
attendant, should be required by law to notify the nature of the disease to
the Medical Officer of Health so soon as they or any of them are aware of it;
and that in the case of non-paupers, the medical attendant should, if it is inexpedient
to impose any further obligation on him, be similarly required by
law to furnish the sick person, or those in charge of him, with a certificate of
the nature of the disease, in the form which we have already suggested, to be
by them communicated to the Medical Officer of Health. On every certificate
so communicated a small fee should be paid to the medical man who signed
it."
But most important of all, perhaps, is the action taken by
the House of Commons in the Session of the same year (1882),
when the Select Committee on "Sanitary Regulations" stated
in their Report that they had "little difficulty in forming the
opinion that the time had arrived when provisions of law on the
subject (of Compulsory Notification) may be sanctioned, at
least in the more important Urban Sanitary Districts." The
Committee, moreover, framed a Model Clause providing for
Notification, in Local Acts, and recommended that, in any
future amendment of the Public Health Acts, powers to secure
Notification should be extended to all Urban Sanitary
Authorities, or at least that means should be devised for