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44
tended and completed." The Committee give, under the headings
"Admission of Patients to Managers' Hospitals" and "General
Conveyance of Persons suffering from Infectious Disease," a
succinct and highly interesting account of the steps by which
the Asylums Board, from being merely an Authority for providing
hospital accommodation for paupers suffering from infectious
disease, have developed into a Central Hospital Authority for providing
such accommodation for persons in all classes of the community
in need of isolation, and the Ambulance Authority for
all London—these new powers having been conferred by the
Poor Law Acts of 1879 and 1889, to the provisions of which, as
well as to the action of the Managers in anticipation of legislation,
I have made reference in other portions of the present
report. It is interesting to note, in this narrative, the judicious
boldness displayed by the Managers, from time to time, in doing
what they deemed to be for the public good ; so that it may
be truly said that, in almost every instance, legislation followed
in the steps of their practice, which often had the great advantage
of the moral support afforded by the tacit approval of
the Local Government Board. It has now come to pass that
persons in any rank of Society suffering from small-pox,
diphtheria, or fever, may be admitted to the Managers' Hospitalsupon
the application of any duly qualified (registered) medical
man ; practically without payment, on the sole condition that a
medical certificate be handed to the nurse in charge of the
Ambulance, which is sent immediately to remove the patient,
without charge, upon receipt of an application at the offices of
the Board, or at an Ambulance Station, as the case may be.
That the system now in vogue has been attended with the
happiest results, in reducing the amount of infectious disease in
the Metropolis, and has thus proved a great boon to all classes
of the community, is now universally admitted, and your vestry
are entitled to no mean share of the credit due to those by
whose instrumentality the beneficent scheme has been brought
to perfection.