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required to communicate the cases to the head teachers. This
system is in use in Kensington, and works quite satisfactorily,
without any publicity. To send the return to School Managers,
who have nothing to do with the admission or the exclusion of
children, and who often meet at long intervals, would be alike
injurious and futile. The County Council, by section 30 (4),
will have, as respects London, the same power of extending
the Infectious Disease (Notification and Prevention) Acts to any
infectious disease, as a Sanitary Authority have as respects their
district, thus being able to over-ride the Sanitary Authority.
Hospitals.—Section 31 repeals section 15 of the Poor Law
Act, 1879, relating to contracts by the Asylums Board with a
Sanitary Authority, for the treatment of infectious persons in the
Board's hospitals; a similar provision is enacted in section 63
of the Consolidation Bill. Power, continued to the Sanitary
Authority (section 60 of the Consolidation Bill), to provide
hospitals is never likely to be exercised. In such hospitals, and in
a Board hospital, the patient may be made liable for the expenses
of his maintenance. Such liability, practically speaking, is never
enforced, nor is it intended to be. It is to the public interest to
make the hospitals free, in law, as they are in practice, patients
being admitted at the request of any duly qualified medical
practitioner; and it is to be regretted that the law has not been
assimilated to the practice. The practice has been of inestimable
value to the Metropolis, and no one knowing the facts, or having
the public welfare at heart, will ever seek to enforce the provisions
of law which, if carried out, would lead to the exclusion of
numerous patients and to spread of disease, from inability to
isolate such patients in their own homes.
Compulsory Removal of the Infectious Sick.—No provision is
made extending the power of existing law, but the words, in section
26 of the Sanitary Act, 1866, "or lodged in a room occupied by
more than one family," are repealed by section 28 (2).