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57
Hospital Administration.
appreciated. The officiating Clergy are supplied with the necessary
robes which are kept expressly for this purpose.
THE AFTERCARE OF THE CONSUMPTIVE.
Many cases who have considerably improved but are by no
means free of disease ask to be discharged at the end of a few
months, in order to work again. Of course there is no power to
detain such cases, and the problem is a serious and difficult one.
Some uniform standard should be arrived at before discharging a
patient as fit for work, at least three out of four of the following
conditions should be satisfied, viz.:—
(a) No rise of temperature above 99 degrees F.
(b) No expectoration.
(c) No moist sounds heard in the lungs.
(d) Patient gaining weight.
When a patient leaves the Institution the Superintendent
informs the Tuberculosis Officer for the district in which the
patient lives, and gets him properly followed up.
Every Health Authority should apply for and get power to
detain or isolate every case of consumption who has neither the
means nor the facilities for getting proper preventive treatment.
STATE AID FOR DISCHARGED PATIENTS.
It is often impossible for a patient who has consumption to
get suitable employment. His employer often refuses to take him
back, and in any case sedentary or dusty work is injurious to his
prospects of keeping fairly well.
Would it not be possible for each county to have its colony
where such patients could be employed in agriculture, farming,
building, land cultivation and afforestation, and could not such a
colony be practically self-supporting?