[Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Smethwick County Borough.

  • Smethwick (Worcestershire, England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1948
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1948] / Medical Officer of Health, Smethwick County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/48 (page 10)
    out oi all recognition in most parts of the country, although the standard even in 1929 was extremely high in large centres of population such as Birmingham. In many smaller towns it was frequently deplorably lo)v. Medical officers of health may well be proud of the work tvhich they have done in hosijital administration between 1930 and 1948, but they can .scarcely look back upon these years with pride in the contemplation of their contiibution to the study of those factors which adversely affect the health of the mass of people in their own homes. There are, however, numerous exceptions to this, and many of them who have remembered their early days and their early training have always in the foiefiont of their mind a vision of health and not of disease. Although the transference of general hospitals from tin' liocal Authorities has been an unqualified ble.ssiug to the |)ublic health staff, it is doubtful if one can say this of the infectious diseases hosiutals and the tuberculosis sei vice. and most of us regard the futui-e of these two with misgivings. I'ixpcrience since the 5th July suggests that the work of the medical staff of the smaller fever hospitals is looked upon with ilisdain and contem|)t by physicians, who complain with some justice that the clinical aiinamentarium of the smaller fever hosijital staff is exiguous. 'Phis is true, but the .Medical Supc-rintendents, who are often the medical officers of health of the local ^listrict, can at least claim that they have succeederl in doing what other clinicians have singularly failed to ilo, namely, they have almost wip('d out their speciality. .Most of these in.stitutions are half empty, and begging for itatients. What a testimony to the efficiency of their staff, and yet the ironic fact is that their woik is despised and rejected! In retort the jmblic health doctors might well accuse ihe general jihysiciaiis and surgeons of almost complete failure to leduce the incidence of the diseases they treat, many of which have incrmised va.stly in numbers and volume. Theii' main successes are due not to their own efforts, but to the chemists wdio have suijplii'd them with new and more useful drugs, and to the bacteriologists aii' mycologists who have |)rovidod them with better and more modern antibiotics. Prevention is better than cure. This is generally acceiJted in words—but not in deeds. 'Phe i)ublic will pour vast sums into the erection of huge ami expen.sive hospitals where the weekly cost of a patient runs to £10, £12 or £15 a week Imt, understandably enough, the man in the street is not interasted in what does not happen to himself. He is blis.sfully umnvan' of the typhoid fever he does not contiact, of the cholera which he does not suffer from, of the smallpox which is kept from his midst by constant endeavour, and indeed, of the diphtheria which took such a toll of the preceding generation but from which his child now rarely suffers. The future should not be regarded with desijondency even in this connection. No-'one thirty years ago could ))o.ssibly have coticeivi'd that the State and Local .\uthorities could be persuaded to spend the considerable sums which they now spend on the prevention of disease. Nevertheless it has happened, and it is ])robable that the increasing cost of hospital f reatment will, by its very magnitude, force the country to consider the problem of ijreventing many of these costly diseases by the ex]jenditure of a small jnoportion of this money in tackling the beginning of disease, and laying more stress on prevention rather than on cure. THK YKAIl IN S.MKTHWICX. The number of births fell from the peak figure of 1,(308 in 1947 to 1,451, but this number was still considerably higher than for the period before the second World War. The death rate also fell from 11-7 to 10-98 per thousand. It was, however, in the realm of matei-nal and child health that the lesnlts