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years ago, that the expenditure incurred in the treatment, in
the Managers' hospitals, of all cases of infectious disease, should
be a charge upon a Metropolitan Common Fund, by
whatever name called. It is to be hoped that the President
will be enabled in the current session to give effect to his
intention to deal effectively with the question by special
legislation.
THE HOSPITALS AND THE SANITARY ACTS.
A Justice is enabled—sec. 26 Sanitary Act, 1866—by Order,
on a certificate signed by a duly registered medical practitioner,
to direct the removal of any person suffering from a "dangerous
infectious disease," and ''being without proper lodging or accommodation,"
to a hospital "within the district" of the Nuisance
Authority. It is in the power of the Local Government Board
to issue an Order, under section 51 of the Sanitary Law Amendment
Act, 1876, declaring the Managers' Hospitals to be "within
a convenient distance" of any of the sanitary districts in the
Metropolis for the purpose of the section first cited. Upon the
issue of such an Order every hospital named therein "shall be
deemed to be within the district" of the named Sanitary
Authority. The Board have not issued an Order hitherto, but
it is desirable that such an Order should be issued (although
the occasions are few on which it is found necessary to exercise
the compulsory powers of removal), seeing that the hospitals
are only six in number, while the Sanitary Districts are forty.
Certain of the Sanitary Authorities, whose districts are more or
less remote from the hospitals, having made application to the
Board to issue an Order, their communications were referred by
the Board to the Asylums Board for "any observations that
the Managers may desire to offer upon this question." The
Managers, having considered the question, stated that they "had