THE Mount Ida Chronicle THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1877.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 414, 1 March 1877, Page 2

THE Mount Ida Chronicle THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 1877.

The poor folk of Dunedin are thunderstruck at the idea of having to pay for their own sick at the rate of Is. 11 Jd. per diem (875). The enormity of the County Hospital Committees in sending incurable patients to Dunedin Hospital, if Dunedin is to find the money, is expressly enlarged upon by the excited citizens. In 1873 Dunstan sent four cases, and Tuapeka two. This would be a gross aggregate imposition of lis. 7id. per diem upon the citizens of Dunedin. During the whole time the Mount Ida Hospital has been established, its Committee were guilty of sending one man, whose ease, we are glad to say, is not permanent and incurable. These enormities, we quite agree with the Dunedin papers, must cease.

It is to be feared that the astonishing selfishness of the panic has not occurred to the citizen- mind. Fortunately the country is not the source of disease, and there is little need to fear that the most rigid law of exclusion would do much harm. As a matter of fact, the few cases of disease in the country Hospitals have too often been caused by elements of evil as yet peculiar to Dunedin. A man gets stricken, and he flies to the country for air and relief, as from a pest house. At the same time very many in the country, without applying to the country Hospitals, do go to Dunedin for medical advice, and are persuaded by the consulting medical man to go to the Hospital, the case being beyond the private means of the patients. Do the citizens mean to exclude all who are not on the citizen's roll. If so, how about those who have no property. It would be an idea worthy of a city that could be guilty of such a scene as the trial of Pearson to preserve the Hospital for property. The propertyless could be registered at the same time as the dogs, and the same macl i aery—the police, could do both. We merely suggest this to the civic mind. The outcome of the line of exclusion proposed will be a parish system and a poor law. Possibly wiser counsels will prevail, and the Dunedin Committee may see that it has reciprocal relations with the country of more magnitude than lis. 7|d. a-day for six afflicted paupers. In country hospitals the average expenses per head are necessarily great, because a staff has to be kept for very few patients. There can be no doubt that the local Committees would pay for the maintenance of cases they sent down to the metropolis. Yet, unless the central management be something vastly different to what it has been, we implore the local Committees by all that is most solemn in the name of humanity to retain their sick in their own hospitals.