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96
COMPULSORY NOTIFICATION OF INFECTIOUS
DISEASE.
The Infectious Disease (Notification) Act, which came
into operation in October, 1889 (but was repealed by the
Public Health Act, 189], as from 1st January 1892, its provisions
being re-enacted therein) has worked with uniform
success, and without appreciable friction. It has been adopted
by large numbers of provincial sanitary authorities, and is now
operative in respect of urban and rural sanitary districts containing
some five-sixths of the population of England and
Wales. In the Metropolis notification has been compulsory
from the first. In another place (page 69) a Table w ill be
found, shewing the number of cases of each of the scheduled
diseases notified in 1891 to the several Metropolitan Medical
Officers of Health. It is the duty of the Medical Officer of
1 Iealth, to forward to the Managers of the Asylums Board, daily,
copies of the medical certificates or "notifications" received by
him, and the Managers are required to send to the County
Council, and to the several Medical Officers of Health, a
weekly return of the cases so reported to them.
defects in the Act.— In my last Report I drew attention
to defects in the Act, e.g., in regard to the form of the
medical-certificate prescribed by the Local Government Board,
and to the unfortunate exemption of the Medical Officers of
General Hospitals from the necessity of notifying to the
Medical Officers of Health cases of infectious disease admitted
to those institutions * These defects have been rectified in
* Under section 3, sub-section 1, every case of infectious disease occurring
amongst the inmates of any building used for human habitation, had to be
notified, "unless such building is a hospital in which persons suffering from an
infectious disease are received." or, in other words, as a natural interpretation
would seem to imply, unless such building is an infections disease hospital. Rut the
Local Government Board expressed an opinion that the Medical Officers of general
hospitals and infirmaries were exempted by the sub-section from the necessity to
notify, the effect of such exemption being that many cases were not notified at all,
and the houses wherein such cases occured were, presumably, not disinfected.