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79
The Vestry informed the Vestry of Rotherhithe that they
agreed with their views as to the unnecessary cost incurred
by reason of such plural notification, and as to the inconvenience
and misconception arising therefrom, but that
they feared that any amendment of the law to check the
same might result in infectious cases not being reported to
the Sanitary Authority at all.
In connection with the question of the notification of
infectious diseases the Medical Officer of Health of the
Parish brought under the notice of the Vestry an important
question which had arisen as to the correct interpretation
to be put upon Sec. 55 (1) (b) of the Public Health (London)
Act, 1891. Two or three cases had occurred in a hospital
in the parish of patients contracting a notifiable disease,
such as scarlet fever, after seven weeks' residence in the
hospital, and certificates were sent by the Medical Officer
of the hospital to the Medical Officer of Health of this
Parish, but on copies thereof being sent to the Metropolitan
Asylums Board in compliance with the Act, the Clerk of
that Board declined to accept them on the ground that the
certificates should have been sent to the Medical Officer of
Health of the district from which the patient was originally
removed, and not the Medical Officer of Health of this
district.
The Section requires every medical practitioner attending
on or called in to visit a patient suffering from a notifiable
disease to forthwith send to the Medical Officer of Health
of the district a certificate giving certain specified particulars.
The Section goes on to say that where the certificate
refers to an inmate of a hospital, it shall specify the place
from which and the date at which the inmate was brought
to the hospital, and shall be sent to the Medical Officer of