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19
The Council Has entered into an agreement with the Guardians
similar in its terms to agreements with other parishes in the Edmonton
Union, whereby the Council are under obligation to Isolate, Treat, and
if necessary, Maintain all persons within the oarish while suffering
from Infectious Disease without enquiring whether such persons are
or are not pauper cases.
The Council in 1916. recognising the urgent necessity for further
accommodation, approached the Local Government Board with a view
to obtaining the Board's consent to the purchase of a suitable site and
the raising of the necessary loan to establish an Infectious Diseases
Hospital for Tottenham. A local enquiry was held, at which medical
practitioners practising in the district expressed their views strongly to
the effect that additional accommodat'on was urgently necessary. The
purport of the report of the Local Government Board's representative
to the Board is of course not known to your Medical Officer of
Health, but that the necessity for increased hospital provision was
emphasised may be inferred from the fact that the Council were advised
to try certain alternative expedients to meet the district's needs, but
consent to the raising of a loan for the purpose of providing a hospital
was withheld. The Board's suggestions were diligently pursued and
met with no success, even the Board's own pleading on Tottenham s
behalf being unavailing. Under these circumstances it might reasonably
have been expected' that the Board would have yielded to Tottenham's
petition, but such was not the case and Tottenham's plight is emphasised1
by the present degree of overcrowding of the houses— houses never
designed for the nursing of the infectious sick.
There appears to be no proper solution of the difficulty in respect
of the efficient isolation of the infectious sick other than the erection
of a suitable and sufficient institution at the earliest possible moment.
It cannot be contended that Tottenham is not sufficiently large
to support its own Ifo'ation Hospital. The large sum of money Tottenham
pays to the Metropolitan Asylums Board annually would go far
towards if it does not actually exceed the amount required to establish!
and maintain a hospital for the district. It is submitted that the effort
to run large institutions economically has been the direct means of
preventing a clearer knowledge of the causes of infectious diseases
from becoming known, and it can only be as these causes are definitely
ascertained that rational mean, can be employed for the purposes of
prevention. The limited Medical Staffs of large "economically"