View report page

16
streets and places where zymotic and other diseases
have occurred in schools, private, and club practice.
The necessity for a registration of diseases
treated at public institutions has frequently been
brought under notice of the Poor Law and other
authorities. Without this, no system of sanitary
organization can be carried out for checking the
spread of contagious maladies. It would be for the
benefit of the community that all qualified medical
men in a district should be called upon to register
every case of epidemic disease, and to act with
authority and promptitude in cases of epidemic
maladies which they consider dangerous to public
health. In the present imperfect organization,
unfortunately, the Medical Officer of Health has
no certain cognizance of the locality of dangerous
spreading diseases until he is informed by the
death in the weekly returns of the Registrar
General for his district,when it is too late to institute
measures for disinfection. By judicious and well
devised regulations with the Medical men, it is in
the power of the local authority, or of the imperial
Legislature, to stamp out the worst forms of contagion.
Compulsory vaccination has become recognized
as one means; and it is equally reasonable
that means for isolation, ventilation and disinfection
should be carried out in cases of typhus, typhoid,
scarlet fevers, and any other forms of contagious
disease endangering the public health.