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75
prefer a severance of the connection between Poor Law
Administration and the hospital treatment of infectious diseases,
which might be effected by the constitution of a Central
Authority, to be elected by the Vestries and District Boards of
Works, and having power to provide accommodation for all
persons whose isolation in hospitals is necessary for preventing
the spread of disease."
DEPAUPERISATION OF MEDICAL RELIEF IN
INFECTIOUS DISEASE HOSPITALS.
I pointed out in the same report (Jan. 10th, 1877), the
injustice of branding as paupers those who went into the
hospitals for the public good, and claimed that "relief" in
hospitals should be placed upon the same footing as public
vaccination. Any man, I said, may avail himself of the services
of the public vaccinator without being pauperised—without
losing his privilege as an elector. Why? In order to lesson
the risk to himself and to the community, of his catching
small-pox, which is justly regarded as a public danger. Is it
reasonable, then," I asked, "to pauperise an artisan when he
is so unfortunate as to suffer in his family, or in his own person,
from the disease we are so anxious to prevent, because he,
unwillingly indeed, but from a sense of duty, and for the benefit
of the community, consents to go, or let his child go, to a 'ratesupported'
hospital? Would not a Vestry Hospital be a 'ratesupported
'hospital? I fail to see any practical difference
between hospitals supported by rates. It is a question of taking
the money out of the right-hand-pocket or the left. In such a
case all distinctions of pauper and non-pauper should be
abolished. Treat all alike as suffering from a personal calamity
which may grow into a public danger, and act on the maxim,
salus populi, suprema lex." These views found little favour at
the time, but in the Diseases Prevention (Metropolis) Act, 1883
(sec. 7), they received the high sanction of Parliament.