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80
expressed by members of the International Congress of
Hygiene, including many delegates of foreign Governments,
and of the widest experience in matters of public sanitation.
The total number of patients suffering from fever
and diphtheria removed to the Managers' Hospitals during
the year was 7,725, as compared with 8,235 in 1890, and
5,680 in 1889. The average daily removals in the first six
months of the years were 17.12, and in the last six months
25.53, as compared with 15.97 and 29 66 respectively, in 1890.
The aggregate removals during the year, including the transfer
of patients from one hospital to another, numbered 12,852.
The average length of the journey of the fever patients removed
to hospitals, it is stated, did not exceed miles.
Small-pox Patients.—The year 1891 was the sixth in
which London has enjoyed practical immunity from smallpox,
which, however, manifested increased activity : the
outbreaks of the disease happily were "limited in their scope,
and were effectually checked by the removal of the cases to the
floating hospital in the Thames at Long Reach." " The
Managers' decision, in 1885, to maintain that hospital always
ready for patients, and to remove thither direct from thenhomes
all smajl-pox cases able to bear the journey, has been
repeatedly justified, but never so clearly as during the past
year, when at one time there were no fewer than •'59 patients
under treatment—-a number more than sufficient, according
to the evidence collected by the Local Government Board,
to have exercised, if retained in a London hospital, a most
baneful influence over the immediate neighbourhood, and
possibly over the whole Metropolis." Without necessarily
endorsing all the conclusions of the enquiry on which the
above observation is based, we may heartily agree with the
further remark of the Committee, that "the continuance of
this policy of prompt removal and complete isolation is
essential to the safety of the Metropolis." Ninety persons