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36
in what large measure any success we may have had has been
due to her.
The table on page 62 gives the case mortality year by year of
the cases of scarlet fever and diphtheria actually treated in the
Hospital, but does not include those cases in which the ultimate
diagnosis, e.g., tonsillitis, was less serious than that originally
notified.
The rules and regulations of the Hospital, which had been for
some long time obsolete, were considered in some detail, early in the
the year, by the Hospital Sub-committee, under the chairmanship of
Mr. Watson, and the subjoined rules, as drafted by the Committee,
were ultimately adopted by the Council. These rules settle very
satisfactorily several points that had long given much trouble in
administration, and have worked with complete smoothness. The
old rules, which did not satisfactorily define the position of the
medical superintendent in relation to the treatment of all patients,
have disappeared, and there is no longer opportunity for vexatious
disputations as to the cases which may be admitted. Similarly, the
benefits of the Hospital are as they should be, offered without the
necessity for further payment, to those who actually do pay the
rates. It is one of the things hard to understand that ratepayers
should have been, in the past, so anxious to exclude themselves from
the benefits of what they do pay for; and even yet the middle class
man, who grumbles most heartily at the burden of the rates, hardly
realises how persistently, in the matter of hospitals, libraries, etc.,
he still stands in the light of his own interests.