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with patients suffering from Cholera, but also to deal with
the inmates of the poorer and more overcrowded houses in
which Cholera is present, and from which patients cannot
be removed, in the sense of providing refuges in which the
healthy may find a temporary home. I need scarcely say,
that if an epidemic outbreak should arise, these requirements
will prove exceedingly onerous and extremely
difficult to meet adequately.
In order to the treatment of Cholera patients it will
then be necessary to provide temporary hospitals for the
reception of such as can be removed thereto, with all
suitable accommodation, with nurses, and with medical
attendance, and for such as cannot be removed (unless they
be under the care of private practitioners) also nurses and
medical attendance. And, as above stated, it will also be
necessary to provide refuges or shelters for the accommodation
of the healthy whom on sanitary grounds it is felt
needful to segregate from the sick or the dead.
I do not mean that we shall have to carry out the
above requirements immediately, nor indeed do I believe
that we shall have to carry them out at all. But we may
be required to do it, and to do it almost at a minute's
notice. The difficulty, therefore, has to be faced; and it
is our duty to consider what steps would need to be taken,
in order that we may be ready to act promptly and
efficiently if the necessity should arise. It should be added
that it is explained in the letter under date, August 25th,
addressed by the Secretary of the Local Government Board
to the Vestry Clerk, that "the amount expended by any
local authority in the Metropolis in providing any building