Discussion on the co-ordination of measures against tuberculosis / opened by G.A. Heron. : and, The voluntary notification of phthisis in Brighton : including a comparison of results with those obtained in other towns / by Arthur Newsholme.

  • George Allan Heron
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Discussion on the co-ordination of measures against tuberculosis / opened by G.A. Heron. : and, The voluntary notification of phthisis in Brighton : including a comparison of results with those obtained in other towns / by Arthur Newsholme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    during the last fifteen years one out of every twenty of the working classes had been rehoused in better houses than they had lived in formerly, and he doubted if any town could show a better record than that. Dr. Seaton’s remarks as to the necessary considerations of expense were very important: but tbe experience of Brighton had been not only that it was the cheapest plan to spend money on those things, but in Brighton the cost had not been great. The total cost to the rates of the Health Department was l-02d. in the £-, the total cost of the isolation hospital, with debt charges, 1903 to 1904, was 2-28d., or 2|d. in tbe £; and the clearance areas meant a debt to the town of 1 1-10 pence in the £ for about the next twenty years. Education cost 15‘7d. in the £ in Brighton, not a penny too much; and the police cost 5'7d. in the £, so that sanitary and hospital administration was not being carried out on extravagant lines. Their twenty-five beds for consumptives wei’e worked at a cost of about £1 a bed per week, not including expenditure which would go on whether the beds were utilised for consumptives or not. A large proportion of the annual expenditure came from the Hedgcock bequest. Overcrowding was, of course, at the bottom of the prevalence of phthisis, as had been said. There were two ways of reducing overcrowding or its effects: one slow, tedious, and often unsuccessful. This consisted in steadily enforcing the laws against overcrowding by domiciliary inspection. In practice it failed in a large proportion of cases, although it ought to be pursued with the utmost diligence. The second method of diminishing the evils of overcrowding was to remove those capable of conveying infection from overcrowded homes to public institutions, where their possibilities of mischief were minimised. This was being done by nearly all local authorities for the acute infectious diseases ; it was being done in Brighton also for all the consumptives who lived in unfavourable homes. It should be remembered that in addition to the intentional accommodation for consumptives, most Boards of Guardians had during the last forty years or more been providing unintention- ally a large amount of accommodation for the segregation of consumptives in workhouse infirmaries. In Brighton they had 30 beds for consumptives in the infirmaries, and these with the 25 beds in the sanatorium represented one bed for every 2,000 inhabitants, always occupied by consumptives. Such provision operated immediately in ameliorating overcrowding; the enforcement of the law against overcrowding acted slowly and imperfectly; and consumption spread when there was no legal overcrowding. Both means of abating overcrowding should be adopted with the utmost zeal.
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