the farming out of patients by contract-is distinctly not in keeping with a city of importance and dignity. The City having evinced a desire to build and maintain a modern Isolation Hospital if a suitable site could be found, the Board, in November, 1907, at the request of the Council, undertook to look into available sites and make recommendation thereon. After carefully considering the various sites offered, the Board unanimously recommended as pre-eminently the best, from every point of view, a plot of ground in the rear of the Seventeenth Ward consisting of about three and a half squares of dry high ground, forming an irregular quadrangle bounded by Livingston, Palmetto, Cherry and North Line streets, the whole offered at ten thousand dollars, the City through the Board being given a sixty-days' option at that figure. This plot of ground appealed to the Board because, although ideally isolated and less than 800 feet distant from the neighboring Parish of Jefferson, it was nevertheless found to be centrally located and readily accessible from all directions both by car lines and good roads, and within easy reach of water mains and electric light. The price was also considered reasonable. We inclose a map showing the location of the site recommended, and presenting, for purposes of comparison, other sites offered in the immediate neighborhood. We also inclose a sketch giving the exact dimensions of the ground recommended The matter received unfavorable consideration at the hands of the Council, being adversely reported upon by the special committee charged with the selection of an isolation hospital site. It is regrettable that the City did not avail itself of such splendid opportunity. We doubt if similar favorable conditions will again present themselves. There was at the time an inclination on the part of the Committee of Citizens in charge of the Yellow Fever Fund of 1905 to contribute the balance in their hands to the erection of the proposed isolation hospital if the City showed a willingness to do its share in the matter. This money has since been disposed of for other purposes. So strong is public sentiment in favor of a modern isolation hospital, owned and maintained by the city and administered and controlled by the Board of Health, not a contractor, that the whole question must in course of time be again re-opened. New Orleans is too big a city not to be adequately provided for in this respect eventually. At present the only function of the Board of Health at the small pox hospital is the inspection of convalescents and their sanitary discharge at the proper time. MEASLES. 'There were only thirty-six deaths from small pox and scarlet fever during the past two years-eighteen from each diseasewhereas measles, a much milder disease, not reported to the health authorities, and as a rule not sanitarily handled in the household, furnished seventy-five deaths. It is reasonable to suppose that the two severer diseases, if similarly uncared for and permitted to spread, would have each given a mortality at least twice as large as that of measles. It is difficult as a rule to estimate even approximately the enormous saving in human life through sanitary measures of prevention and isolation, but in this instance at least we have something tangible to work upon, and to say that over two hundred and fifty lives were probably saved in this direction alone is not unreasonable. From these figures another deduction might be drawn-that the time for including measles in the list of diseases to be reported to the Board of Health has apparently arrived. But first the pulse of the medical profession must be felt and the readiness of physicians for such a step carefully ascertained. |