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family. This difficulty in the hospital cases, and especially in
those that have been in the hospital beyond the usual period, is a
serious one. Most of these cases that are infectious, when returned
home, have a discharge either from the nose or ears, and in some
cases from both organs. This discharge, although highly infectious
at the moment of return from hospital, seems to lose its
infective power when the child has been at home for a week or ten
days. I believe that many of these cases are kept in hospital far
beyond the period at which any good can accrue from such residence,
indeed, I am disposed to think that this prolonged stay in
hospital is harmful to the patient, and certainly renders it more
capable of infecting others when it is discharged. I think that
more care should betaken at the hospital to the regular disinfection
of these nose and ear cases, and also that when such cases are returned
home notice should be sent to the Medical Officer of Health
of the district, so that they can be watched. I cannot understand
why the Asylums Board will not give notice to the Medical Officer
of Health when any of the patients of his district are discharged
from hospital. Such information would assist Medical Officers
enormously.
The discharge of a patient from a crowded hospital, where
the infectious disease has become, so to say, "grafted" on to the
individual, must be the means of propagating the disease in many
cases. The only way, as it appears to me, is to place these cases,
known to be infectious in a more or less degree, in small detached
houses, where each is isolated for a week or ten days before it is
returned home. This would be an additional expense to the Board,
but it would be compensated for by many of the cases being discharged
home earlier than is now the case.
DIPHTHERIA.
The deaths from this disease have much increased in the year.
The number being 104 this year, against 72 in 1898.
The total number of cases notified, including Membranous Croup,
was 728. The notified cases in 1898 were 459.