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accordance with which the duties above considered have
been systematically carried out during the year. And, as
having an important bearing on the same subject, I have
also placed in the appendix a letter, under date the 24th
October, 1889, received from the London County Council,
relating to the periodical inspection of drains, together with
memoranda by the Surveyor and myself; which were incorporated
in the reply returned to the Council.
The next subject concerning which I have to make a
few remarks is the notification of dangerous infectious
diseases which became compulsory on the 30th October
last, and which had, therefore, been in operation for five
months at the end of March. According to the Act,
immediate notification has to be made to the Medical
Officer of health, both by the Medical man in attendance
on any patient suffering from one of the notifiable diseases,
and by the father or other person responsible for his care.
The notifiable diseases are, in the terms of the Act, "Smallpox,
cholera, diphtheria, membranous croup, erysipelas, the
disease known as scarlatina or scarlet fever, and the fevers
known by any of the following names, typhus, typhoid,
enteric, relapsing, continued or puerperal." The objects
of the Act are mainly as follows:—to secure early information
as to the origin, spread, and prevalence of socalled
preventible diseases, which are specially dangerous to
life, so as to enable the Sanitary Authorities to advise in
regard to their sanitary management, and to enforce, so far
as the Acts which they administer allow, segregation of the
sick, removal to hospital, and disinfection, and to investigate
the causes and natural history of such affections. It has been
the duty of Sanitary Authorities for some years past to