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been received, and such cases therefore do not come into
account in the weekly statements made by the Asylums
Board to the London County Council.
Upon the front page, and in the side-note to Sec. 4, the
words "Several Medical Practitioners" appears to have been
inserted where the Act should read "several Medical Officers
of Health."
Section 3 provides that the Act takes effect where an
inmate of any building is suffering from an Infectious
Disease, unless such building is a hospital in which persons
suffering from an Infectious Disease are received. Here the
words should be:— Unless such building is a hospital in
which persons suffering from such Infectious Disease are
received.
The repetition in the Act of the word an, which means
any, would permit of a patient attacked with Scarlet Fever,
say, remaining in a hospital occupied with Small.pox patients,
or vice versa. This cannot have been the intention of the
Act.
3 (a) The duty of notifiying is cast upon the patient's
guardian as well as upon the Medical Attendant. In point
of fact, the guardian but rarely notifies to me, and it seems
not to be necessary.
Cases visiting a Hospital in St. James's as mere outpatients,
coming say from Brighton or from Spitalfields and
returning home immediately, have been reported to me. It
seems to me that the registration of such cases would falsify
the returns for St. James's, and that such certificates should
be sent to the Medical Officer of Health for the District in
which the patients are "inmates of the building."