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diseases reported in the several sanitary districts. Subsequently,
however, and without reason assigned, they decided to defer the
publication of the proposed summary. Thereupon, and believing
that the information thus officially withheld, would not be without
value, and would prove interesting to your Vestry and others,
even if published at four-weekly intervals, I prepared and inserted
in my monthly report, dated December 4th, 1889 (No. 12, page
133), a table summarising the returns, and have continued to
publish a like table monthly, ever since. After a few months the
Managers, many of whom, and the Clerk to the Board also, had
regularly received my reports, took exception to the publication
of the Table, for what reason I know not; there being nothing of
a confidential character in it, nothing that might not be published
in the daily papers, just as the facts in regard to deaths from
infectious diseases are published as they appear in the weekly
returns of the Registrar-General. I declined to discontinue the
publication of the Table, whereupon the Managers ceased to send
me the weekly returns, and I have had to depend upon colleagues,
who share my objection to needless secrecy in matters of public
health, for the information tabulated in my reports. The Managers
subsequently declined to supply a copy of the return to the Medical
Officer to the School Board, and they also refused an application
for the return made by the editor of a "monthly journal of Public
Health." In February last the Statistical Committee reported that,
in their opinion, the time had arrived "when returns of cases of
infectious disease notified under the provisions of the Act might
be periodically published but although the motion to this effect,
upon consideration of the Committee's report, was moved and
seconded by leading members of the Board, it was defeated by 29
to 15 votes. For what information, therefore, the Managers
themselves and the general public possess with regard to the
localisation of infectious diseases, as notified, they appear to be
indebted to my monthly reports.
It is a singular commentary on the reluctance of the Board
to publish a mere numerical and localised summary of the