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80
Health of the district in which the said place is situate.
The intention of the section, no doubt, is to give the
Medical Officer of Health of the district from which the
patient was removed, within the period of the incubation
of the disease, a direct notification of the appearance of the
disease. The words of the Section, taken by themselves,
appear to bear no other interpretation than that put upon
them by the Metropolitan Asylums Board. Th;is interpretation,
however, in many instances defeats the evident
intention of the Legislature. For instance, a patient in a
hospital for consumption might contract a fever two years
after his admission, and it is absurd to suppose that the
Legislature really intended that in such a case a certificate
should be sent to the Medical Officer of Health of the
district from which the patient had been removed two
years previously, and not to the Medical Officer of Health
of the district in which the hospital itself is situate.
If an epidemic were to occur at the Throat Hospital, for
example, and certificates relating to the different patients
were sent to the various parts of the Kingdom as the Clerk
to the Metropolitan Asylums Board contends, instead of to
the Medical Officer of Health of this Parish, it might not
be until the epidemic had obtained a foothold in the Parish
from infection from the hospital that the Medical Officer
would obtain any knowledge of the outbreak.
The Vestry, believing that the interpretation put upon the
Section by the Clerk of the Metropolitan Asylums Board
would defeat the evident object of the Section taken as a
whole, addressed a communication to the Local Government
Board asking the Board either to issue an explanatory circular
as to the course to be followed in such cases, or if in their
opinion further legislation is necessary, to take the earliest