[Report 1930] / Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow.

  • Glasgow (Scotland)
Date:
1930
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1930] / Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/422 (page 9)
    in Glasgow, administration, broadly speaking, proceeds on the prin- ciple of providing suitable care and treatment for the affected indi- vidual, and preventing as far as possible massive infection of contacts by providing hospital accommodation for advanced cases on an ample scale. The saving of life which the declining figures represent has taken place at the later ages of life. Phthisis is still an insidious and acute disease among adults of either sex between 15 and 25 years of age. As regards non-pulmonary tuberculosis, the decline in incidence and severity has also been striking. This form of tuberculosis lends itself to remedial treatment, and the opening of Mearnskirk Hospital, with 466 beds for children, has enabled large numbers of children to be treated under specialist care and by open air methods. As between Robroyston and Mearnskirk Hospitals a considerable trans- ference of children has been effected, the former institution devoting itself more to the adult forms of the disease. During the last twenty years the death-rate from non-pulmonary tuberculosis in Glasgow has fallen more rapidly than has the corres- ponding rate for tuberculosis of the lung. Tracing the former rate since 1915, it is found that the decline in abdominal tuberculosis, i.e., that form of the disease which is generally accepted as being caused by the bovine bacillus—has proceeded at an accelerated rate as compared with disease of other organs. This affection has become more difficult to recognise and more amenable to treatment, while tuberculosis of the glands of the neck, also regarded as mostly a product of the bovine bacillus, has markedly declined in incidence and severity. This reduction in bovine infections cannot be definitely ascribed to any particular underlying cause, but, in the absence of a satisfactory alternative explanation, it appears that pasteurisation of milk should be included among the likely factors, and that public health administration should, for this reason among others, support the efficient pasteurisation of ordinary market milk. Large centres of population should possess power to enforce this safeguard. A recent memorandum by the Ministry of Health on Bovine Tuberculosis in Man (Reports on Public Health and Medical Subjects, No. 63, 1931) concludes as follows —“ It will be seen that pasteurisation carried out in a suitable apparatus and under strict scientific control is cap- able of protecting the consumer from the danger of infection with the tubercle bacillus, and that milk so treated appears to retain its valuable food properties practically unimpaired.” Maternity and Child Welfare.—During the past two or three years increased publicity has been accorded in Government and other