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80
Prom time to time patients present themselves at the Asylums
Board Hospitals not provided with the usual medical certificate,
and are admitted upon being found to be suffering from infectious
disease, no notification usually having been given to the Medical
Officer of the district in which the persons so suffering reside.
The Local Government Board, taking cognizance of such cases,
and deeming it important, in the interests of the public health,
that the Medical Officer of Health of the district or parish from
which the person affected had come, should be informed of the
outbreak, informed the Managers that they would be glad if the
Managers would instruct their Medical Officers in the various
hospitals, to forward to the Medical Officer of Health, in such
cases as those referred to, particulars of the name and address of
the patient, and of the disease from which he is found to be
suffering; but the Managers did not fall in with the suggestion.
Inexplicable as the action of the Managers may be in one
respect, in regard to notification matters, it is beyorid question
that the Statistical Committee are anxious to make the certificates
as useful as possible for public health purposes, and with this
object they recommended the Managers to obtain from the Local
Government Board, sanction, which was accorded, for the
preparation and printing of maps, shewing by "Spots" the
cases of scarlet, enteric, and typhus fevers, diphtheria, and
small-pox, notified in 1890 under the provisions of the Act.
These maps are seven in number, viz., four for the scarlet-fever
cases, being one for each quarter of the year; one each for the
enteric fever and diphtheria cases, and one for the combined typhus
fever and small-pox cases, the cases of small-pox of course being
differentiated. It goes without saying that these maps will
become increasingly useful, as years pass by, as a means of
indicating, and thereby of calling required attention to what may
be called the plague spots of the Metropolis. It may be added
that the notifications in 1890 of the diseases above-named, as
shewn in my summary of the thirteen four-weekly returns,
were 24,378, viz.:—Scarlet fever 15,438, diphtheria 5732,