[Report 1926] / Medical Officer of Health, Wakefield City.

  • Wakefield (England). City Council.
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1926] / Medical Officer of Health, Wakefield City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/74 (page 13)
    cases, the general conclusion was that the nursing was of infinitely greater importance than the drugs administered.’ ” ‘‘ Again, at the present time the effective provision of hospital ‘‘ accommodation for respiratory infections is proportionately inadequate. All over the country we have well-equipped hospitals built specifically for the purpose of treating infectious disease. In practice infectious disease has come to mean almost exclusively ‘‘ three infectious diseases :—scarlet fever, diphtheria, and small- pox, wdiilst the acute respiratory diseases go unprovided for. The time has come when the tvhole question of using isolation “ hospitals to greater advantage calls for the consideration of local authorities, and it may well be that fuller regard should he paid to patients suffering from respiratory disease. There can be no question that much of our respiratory mortality is reducible if we ‘‘ tackle the disease at its initiation and treat it promptly.” The practical outcome of the foregoing is this. A good deal of respiratory mortality is due to climatic conditions beyond our control, but a good deal is due to conditions over which we have control. Wakefield has for instance a grossly-polluted atmosphere and this condition seriously inimical to the respiratory organs, can be removed. The unsatisfactory housing conditions is I believe another factor of importance and this defect can be removed. More adequate hospital accommodation can also be provided and this need should be kept in mind in connection with the proposals for a new municipal hospital. Education in the ways of healthy living wall also prove another useful ally in reducing the : scourge of lung diseases. j I Heart disease continues to exact a heavy toll of life and besides entails a high rate of incapacity previous to the fatal termination. I have in recent reports advised you that recent work on the subject has opened out definite and practical lines of prevention and control particularly with regard to disease arising from rheumatic infection in childhood. The Special Committee of the British Medical Association which has been investigating this subject for the past two years has just issued a Second Report suggesting various lines of action, e.g., the elimination of damp houses (a big job for Wakefield where there are so many old damp houses), the securing that children do not sit in school with damp feet and clothes, the recognition and treatment of children with diseased tonsils (a fertile source of rheumatic infection), the medical supervision of children with threatened or established :signs of rheumatic infection and the provision of rest homes lor hospital-schools for the necessarily prolonged treatment of early cases of rheumatic heart disease. The question of notification