The Board of
Health acted as little as possible upon this clause; holding that, under
existing circumstances, it was impossible to treat patients with
advantage in their own houses. Those hospitals and dispensaries were
managed by the Relief Committees, under the control of the Relief
Commissioners, appointed to carry out the Act 10 Vic., cap. 7. By the
16th clause of the amended Fever Act, provision is made "for the proper
and decent interment of the deceased destitute persons who shall die of
fever or any other epidemic disease in any electoral division or
district, for which any Relief Committee shall have been constituted."
Whilst this very extensive system of medical relief was established and
carried out under the second Bill, the guardians of the poor continued
to use the powers granted to them in the former Bill, of giving medical
relief. The returns from these two sources give, respectively, the
number of fever cases received into their hospitals, but we have no
authentic means of determining the number of persons who died of fever
in their own houses, or on the highways and byways, as they wandered
about in search, of food. Such cases must have been very numerous.
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