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Lyttelton Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 7485, 26 February 1885, Page 4

A great disaster has happened at the Wellington Hospital which has a great moral. The question of who is to blame, if any one, for that disaster is not for us to determine. We notice that there are two doctors who refuse to divide the responsibility. But their difference is not the interesting point of the case. The interesting point is the rapidity with which infection flew over the Hospital. We do not profess to know anything of the degrees of rapidity with which various infectious diseases act, or whether there is any variety of degree of rapidity at all. It is clear, however, from what has taken place at the Wellington Hospiral that the refusal of Hospital authorities to admit infectious cases is but too well founded. There was a hard case here some months ago. A poor girl suffering from diphtheria came to the Hospital and was refused admittance. She could not be admitted, and she wandered away in search of some good Samaritan, whom fortunately she found. Hard as the case was, the Hospital Surgeon was quite right. He did his duty : he would have been wrong if he had done anything else. It was pointed out, at the time, that the duty of the Hospital Surgeon should not be made so difficult; that he ought not to be obliged to send away cases of dangerous illness to wander about the streets; that there ought to be a Hospital for the reception of infectious cases. The incident at Wellington has drawn attention to this necessity with disastrous point. We hope the warning will not be lost.