When we are quite sure that there is an infectious disease in our house, we ought to be compelled by Act of Parliament to register the fact at some convenient place, where a list of houses similarly infected should undoubtedly be exposed in a prominent place. None should be exempt from this law, and the doctor should be the person responsible for the registration, a severe penalty, moreover, being inflicted in any case of wilful misrepresentation or of the withholding of proper information of the outbreak. That the penalty is necessary is proved by the fact that I once knew a country doctor speak of a bad attack of scarlet fever as a mild case of rose rash, because he was abjectly afraid of losing the patronage of the dame whose child it was, and who objected to the isolation which would have been her portion had the truth been known. Still the disease spread, owing to her selfishness and the doctor’s supineness, and the truth came out, but not before she had done endless mischief and caused the death of a child of one of her relations, who was sent into the house with his nurse to inquire after the ‘rose rash,’ and who would never have been allowed to pass even the same side of the street had his mother known the truth; and both the doctor and the patient’s mother were in consequence ostracised and isolated from their fellow-creatures far more completely and for a much longer period than they would have been had they boldly and at once told the truth. Nowadays, with the slight exception of the law that we must not wilfully expose anyone suffering from an infectious disease in a public conveyance, we may do pretty much as we like.[A] We can send other members of the family to church or the theatre; we can send our washing to the public laundry, we may let our friends come and see us without mentioning what is the matter, and, in fact, there is no law except the moral law (which governs so few of us) to prevent us handing on the complaint to as many people as we can comfortably manage to infect. The registration would prevent this, as it would prevent us from stopping in a fever-bed or (as happened to me not a month ago) from sending a cat to be doctored in a house where there was a fatal case of scarlet fever; and how that cat didn’t bring it back to us is more than I can understand, but it did not. Albeit, any mother can understand what I felt until I knew all chance of infection was over from that source at all events. [A] Since the above was written a law has been passed to make the notification of disease compulsory in London; so there is one step already made in advance. It is the selfishness of other people that spreads so much disease, and therefore the law should force people to be more considerate; then disease will be stamped out undoubtedly, and we can exist without the many qualms and dreads which harass us now, and certainly go far to make life anything but worth living.