View report page

81
enteric fever 3112, small-pox 61, and typhus fever 35. But
considerable correction will have to be made for duplicate or
multiple certificates of cases received from two or more medical
men, who may have had charge of individual patients.
PAYMENT OF FEES FOR CERTIFICATES.
During the year 1890 certificates were received by me for
which the sum of £94 15s. 6d. was paid to medical practitioners
in amounts varying from half-a-crown to £9 9s. 6d. These amounts
having been paid by your Vestry were recouped by the Asylums
Board out of the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. A question
having arisen how the accounts could be most conveniently
arranged, I proposed that we should make out a statement of the
sums due to the several medical men, and forward to each the
amount of his claim, by postal order. This plan—simple and
convenient, the amounts due being known, the certificates
forming, as it were, a bill of items—was adopted, and has worked
satisfactorily.
THE LONDON SCHOOL BOARD AND INFECTIOUS
DISEASE PREVENTION.
In former reports, extending over some fourteen years, I
have made reference to the action of the School Board for
London, taken, at my instance, with the object of preventing
the spread of infectious disease through the agency of public
elementary schools. The Visitors first, and subsequently the
Head Teachers, were instructed to inform the Medical Officer
of Health with regard to any children absent from school, when
there was reason to believe that such absence was probably due
to illness of an infectious character. Since the Notification Act
came into operation, the Board and their Medical Officer have
shewn a commendable desire to utilize its provisions to the utmost
extent possible, for preventing the spread of disease through
Board Schools; and in December a Conference of Medical