[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Surbiton UDC 1909].

  • Surbiton (Surrey, England). Urban District Council.
Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Surbiton UDC 1909]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/78 (page 6)
    This makes the Thirty-Third Report I have sent in, and with it there comes an almost irresistible temptation to indulge in something like a retrospect over the vista of past years—to tell of how things were when I took office in 1876 and of how they are now, of how the changes came about, of what we used to endure in the way of sanitation and sickness, and, by way of comparison, of what we have arrived at and of what we now require and insist on, together with the aspirations we have of the future ; also of the sickness and mortality that used to be looked upon as being sent by Providence until we came to know that this same Providence occasionally assumed the forms of criminally careless milk sellers or of indifferent and self seeking property owners, or of still more careless and ignorant occupiers, and to expatiate on the wonderful changes effected, and of how all these changes, regulations and improvements, begotten of an ever increasing knowledge—mainly on the part of the medical profession—have collectively resulted in such an extraordinary lessening of sickness and mortality that we have, as actuaries know, added many years to the average of human life. These and many other kindred topics would, I believe, be most interesting and might be con¬ sidered germane to the subject, even in so matter- ot-fact a compilation as the Annual Report of a