View report page

33
covered so long a period of the summer, nor did the mortality
during that period rise to so high a level as the average. The
question why diarrhœa is so prevalent and fatal, especially
to infants, in hot summers, has been long under consideration
by the medical department of the Local Government Board. A
"provisional or working hypothesis" has been lately formulated,
which assumes the existence of a form of germ life in
the earth—especially such as is sewage-tainted or otherwise
polluted—which germ, developing into activity when a certain
temperature is attained, and rising into the air, finds admission
into the system with food, and multiplying there, generates a
poison which is the immediate cause of the disease.
METROPOLITAN ASYLUMS BOARD.
The work and proceedings of the Asylums Board, important
at all times to those concerned in sanitary administration
within the Metropolis, have of late years acquired additional
interest, owing to the steps taken by the Managers to make
their hospitals more and more a refuge for the infectious sick
in need of isolation. Accommodation has now been provided,
adequate, apparently, to the needs of the population; and,
during the last three years, beds have been placed at the
disposal of registered practitioners, as well as sanitary officials,
and the resident medical officers of general hospitals, whose
applications for the admission of patients, when made in compliance
with the reasonable requirements of the Board's
regulations, are now invariably attended to without question
or delay. The Board indeed have become in effect the Central
Hospital Authority for London in regard to infectious diseases,
and discharge right well the duties of the position.
THE CHAIRMAN'S ANNUAL REPORT.
Sir E. H. Galsworthy, in his report on the work and
proceedings of the Asylums Board for the twelve mcnths
ended March 25th, 1890, first refers to the important and
C