[Report 1947] / Medical Officer of Health, Isle of Ely County Council.

  • Isle of Ely (England). County Council. n 78027969.
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1947] / Medical Officer of Health, Isle of Ely County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that there were limits to the beneficial results to be obtained from sanitary measures, and that other methods would have to be followed in order to effect a still further reduction in mortality rates, and in the incidence of illness and disability, much of which was not now of a communicable type. Public Health activities then entered a second phase concerned mainly with the prevention of disease and the provision of treatment facilities, especially where these would not otherwise have been readily available. The School Medical and the Maternity and Child Welfare Services were set up primarily for advisory work to be carried out among selected groups of the population, and another notable welfare service which followed later was that provided under the Blind Persons Act, 1921. It was soon discovered that preventive work was most effective when closely related to treatment for which health authorities were either directly, or in some measure, indirectly responsible. The scope of the new service, which started with the provision of treatment for cases of tuberculosis and venereal disease was accordingly extended under various statutory powers to include special treatment schemes for common disabilities among school children, and for a specialist medical service to be incorporated in the maternity schemes which could include institutional accom- modation for complicated cases. As the main responsibility for these schemes was distributed among various types of health authorities, with the exception of the smaller sanitary authorities, overlapping and difference in standards resulted. In the year 1929, the larger health authorities were making arrangements for the institutional accommodation for cases of tuberculosis, some of the local supervising authorities had established maternity homes under the Maternity and Child Welfare Act, 1918, and those health authorities who were also sanitary authorities were maintaining isolation hospitals. When the poor law medical services and institutions were transferred to county councils and county borough councils under the Local Government Act of that year, the door was wide open to go-ahead authorities to set up a full range of hospital service by the appropriation of public assistance institutions for general hospital purposes. The tendency then became marked for the main interest to be switched to the highly interesting clinical services away from the less tangible results to be obtained from purely preventive work. This was further emphasised after the passing of the Midwives Act, 1936, when for the first time a well defined duty was placed on local supervising authorities to provide a special branch of the nursing services. Appointment of County Medical Officers in the smaller admini- strative counties happened to coincide fairly closely with the beginning of this second phase, and as a matter of interest a study