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persons attacked, and for keeping the District in the most wholesome
condition practicable. These measures were carried into effect under
the daily supervision of the Committee. (Order of Council, II. 1-2.)
Each morning a Return was compiled of all ascertained cases of
Cholera, Choleraic Diarrhoea, and Diarrhoea occuring during the previous
day. Information for this return was supplied by the Officers of the
"Workhouse and Bloomsbury Dispensary, and by many private practitioners,
as well as by the officers whom the Committee proceeded to
appoint; and there is evidence that nearly every case of Cholera or
Diarrhoea came at once to the knowledge of the Committee. (0. of C.
I& II. 21.)
For the purpose of house visitation, the Committee divided the
District into six parts, one comprising the greater part of the Parish of
Bloomsbury, while the other five parts comprised St. Giles's Parish, and
contained from six to nine thousand people in each. (O. of C. II. 4.)
To each subdivision a Medical Staff was assigned, consisting of
one Medical Visitor and two assistants. The Medical Visitor was in
all cases a highly qualified practitioner, who gave all his time to the duties
assigned him. His assistants were usually Medical students who had
had much Hospital experience. (0. of C. 11. 4.)
The Medical Visitor was charged to visit from house to house and
from room to room, by himself or his assistants (for all of which work he was
held responsible), in search of cases of Cholera and Diarrhoea, to treat all
such cases immediately, and to take charge of every such ease to a termination.
He had to report every morning the number of houses and
of families visited, the number of new cases of Cholera and Diarrhoea
met with on the previous day, and the result of his treatment of eases
already reported. The enormous amount of work done by this Medical
Staff may be judged of by the fact that they commonly visited 1,700
houses, and 5,200 families daily, and on one day these numbers amounted
to 1,898 and 5,945 respectively. (O. of C. II. 4-5.)
Medicines were provided at any honr of the day or night at each
of four dispensaries which were established by the Committee. Although
relief was never delayed to any applicant suffering under Cholera or
Diarrhoea, the Committee did not consider it sufficient merely to give
medicines, but the name and address of every applicant at the dispensaries
were taken and the case followed up and treated by the Medical Visitors.
In this way two or three hundred Diarrhoea patients were often on the
lists of the Medical Visitors in a single day, while each day added a
large number of new patients (frequently nearly two hundred) suffering
from the complaint. Happily the Diarrhoea proved very amenable to
the skilful treatment of the Visitors, and although from first to last they
had about ten thousand cases of it under treatment, their work did not
accumulate to an unmanageable extent. (O. of C. 11. 7-8.)
The Committee early regarded the provision of a Hospital for
Cholera as one of the most important portions of the duty imposed on
them by the Order of Council. A disease which demands the most
skilful nursing to give a chalice of recovery, and which is known t®