[Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Somerset County Council.

  • Somerset Council
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1945] / Medical Officer of Health, Somerset County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/52 (page 4)
    ihoso days lln.' urgency was very great ; there Was no time I'm- consultations; things Jiad to 1)6 done at once, and ininaaliate iiersonal respousihilii^y laid (o he accepted; and the charge upon us was the ueltare aud safety of many thousands of women and children. Tljcrc were also other charges affecting the reeei)lion of casuatties, the medical side of A.it.P. and tlie obligations ot the new K.M.tS. of the Ministry of ilealth, and there remained the cliarge to continue and to expand the routine medical and nursing services of your Jfepartmeiit. lb was a strenuous time, and, perhaps, never more so than in the chaotic early days of the first Evacuation Scheme. If 1 may lie ])erniilted a personal note, I would say that I was most grateful for the trust and confidence given me so fully at that lime by this County (’uuncil and by the Ministry of Plealth. 1 believe we succeeded w oiulerfully well in this jieriod of great, strain, and it must be rememliered that we were through the worst of our troubles on our own initiative before the many ftegional Organi¬ sations had become established. Nevertheless, these same flegional Organisations, particularly on the hosjiilal side, were of Ihc greatest assistance to us at later stages, and very definitely, without this ftegional link-up, we could hardly have got through many of our very severe stresses of those days. Perhaps Evacuation more than anything else gave us our greatest [iroblems. Staff was short, the population of the area had increased by many thousands, and, at one time, the additional popidatiun in Somerset was in the region of ld8,(AM), with some bO.lMK) ollicial evacuees. That indeed was a gigantic task to face, aud, yet, looking back and taking the broad view, it was sur¬ prising that this colossal upheaval in our social affairs tlid not present greater [iroblems. Troubles there were in [ilenty, but there were no disasters and the situation was never out of control. If we forget some of the lurid, but, nevertheless, in some instances true stories of these times, 1 think it must be generally admitted that this great undertaking was amazingly successful, and surely, in this result, much credit is due to both the hosts and the evacuees themselves. P'rorn the start, it was clear that wdiere unaccompanied children w'ere concerned, the vast majority could (and flid) settle into tlieir new surroundings without much trouble or fuss; it was equally clear that, even this wav, with all its horror and ferocity for the civilian, could not change the habits and wishes of the adult evacuees. A lifetime spent in the Mile End Itoad was not to be lightly replaced by the quiet of the village green or the beauties of the Quantocks aud the Mendips. It just did not w'ork, and a simple homely fact came to light in these affairs—it was, that two women just could not share the same kitchen, be it humble or grand—and, with the realisation of such sirnjile factors, the position gradually eased, and, finally sorted itself out. However, I still say, that this vast movement of population was, in the main, smoothly launched, smoothly received, and, so far as the children were concerned, not without real solid benefits to their health and well-being. The mental experts would have us believe that this movement from home, with all its attendant losses in home and jiarental care, may later well cause profound emotional upsets in many children. This may be so in a limited way, but for the majority, I see no reason to fear this happening. I prefer to believe that their emotional make-up will not, in fact, in any wuiy lag behind tlie undoubted improvement in their physical health. On the medical side of this Evacuation Scheme, there was, of course, an enormous amount of work in general and in special directions, but it was tackled and controlled and no serious issues arose. It was a remarkable circumstance that with all this mixing of town and coimtry children and adults, no epidemic of any importance resulted. Your usual Isolation Hospitals, with some small additional assistance, altliough very hard [iressed at times, were able to meet all demands. It is amusing to note tliat when we were all thinking of serious clashes between town and country infections, and jierhaps, heavy outhreaks of dijihtheria, poliomyelitis, typhoid fever and the like, the main source of troidile was scabies. And it gave a lot of trouble. Exten¬ sive measures were reipiired to deal with it in all parts of the County. Scabies was practically unknown in Somerset before the war, but there is not much that we do not know about it now. It was again a little amusing (depending, of course, on one’s point of view at tlie time) to find that scabies not only exerted its well-known physical irritation, but, in those days, a good deal