Volume 3

The state and the doctor / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb.

  • Sidney Webb
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The state and the doctor / by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    243/322 page 225
    and to the President of the Board, the lack of any strong and consistent policy with regard to the public provision for the prevention and treatment of disease, the terrible want of co-ordination among the several parts of this service, the failure even to keep the work of the Local Authorities under supervision by any systematic medical inspection of the various public hospitals and infirmaries, the absence of medical statistics of their work, and the lack of guidance of the manifold activities and frequent omissions of the Local Authorities in the whole domain of Public Health, with which, as we have seen, the work of the Boards of Guardians is so closely con¬ nected. The time has surely come when the responsi¬ bility for the supervision, guidance, and control of the Local Authorities in all their action in the prevention and treatment of disease, including the administration of the Grants-in- Aid1 in respect of this service, should be placed upon a single Public Health Department, whether that Department be represented by a Minister of its own, or form the principal Division of the Local Government Board. To this Public Health Department—which should be self- contained and complete in itself, with its own specialised legal and architectural experts — there would naturally fall the supervision of all public hospitals and infirmaries, whether now administered by Boards of Guardians or by Town Councils, etc.; of all domiciliary medical inspection and treatment, 1 It is remarkable that the Local Health Authorities in England and Wales, vital as is their work to the community as a whole, receive, at present, the stimulus and assistance of practically no Grants-in-Aid, the only ex¬ ception being less than £100,000 annually towards the salaries of Medical Officers of Health, Inspectors of Nuisances, and Registrars of Births and Deaths, and the payments to Public Vaccinators, O
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