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Isolation
Hospital
This institution has been administered during
the past year by a Provisional Committee, but
it is considered probable that a Joint Hospital
Board will shortly be formed, and then various
improvements that have been suggested from time
to time may perhaps be taken into serious consideration.
There is one matter, however, that need
not and should not be longer delayed, and that is
the putting of the Hospital on the Telephone
Exchange. I referred to this in my last Annual
Report, hoping that it might be early established;
but now that facilities exist, it ought to be done at
once, without any delay. The Medical Officer of
the Hospital, in his Report to the Provisional
Board also recommends it. I would point out
that already some four or five medical men in Surbiton
are on the Exchange, and that public call
offices exist: so that any practitioner, or householder,
can at once apply for the ambulance,
medical men can communicate with the Staff as to
cases and accommodation, and parents with the
Matron as to the progress of patients, etc. Moreover,
the telephone is also in the Dittons and
Esher district, and the advantage to ratepayers
there would be very considerable. Dr. Ackerly
very justly lays considerable stress on the
importance of notes of diagnoses being sent
to him at the Hospital by medical practitioners
of the cases sent in by them for admission,
more especially if diphtheria or typhoid, and
hopes that this request will be better attended
to in the future. He further reports that sixtyseven
patients were under treatment during the
year, and that there were five deaths, not
including one who died in the ambulance on the
way to the Hospital. Six cases admitted were
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