[Report 1941] / Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow.

  • Glasgow (Scotland)
Date:
1941
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Report 1941] / Medical Officer of Health, Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/128
    PREFACE. The Annual Report for 1941 is more a summary of facts than a review of circumstances, which will be undertaken at a later time. The Preface has been reduced to a few introductory notes. The experience of 1941 and of this year shows that the health of the city has been well maintained ; in some respects progress has been made. The general death-rate was 15-6 per thousand of the population, compared with 16-8 for 1940 and 13-3 for 1939. Comparisons between these years show clearly the effect of weather conditions on mortality. The year 1939 was a good year in the climatic sense, while the severe winters in the early weeks of 1940 and 1941 increased the mortality among the old and the very young during the first quarters of these years. For instance, the deaths per million of the population from pneumonia were 768 in 1939, 1,197 in 1940, and 961 in 1941 ; for the first nine months of this year (1942) 581 deaths have occurred. Deaths from bronchitis have followed the same general trend. For the same climatic reason deaths due to pulmonary tuberculosis during the first quarter of 1940 and 1941 exceeded those during the same period of 1939 by 25 per cent, and 20 per cent, respectively ; this year was not marked by a similar increase. As will be gathered from the summarised figures in the Report, the communicable diseases have varied in incidence from year to year. In 1941 scarlet fever was at a low level, but is now increasing rapidly while maintaining its mild type and small death rate. Measles was low in 1941 ; the usual biennial outbreak appeared in 1942, but its incidence and death rate were much lower than usual. Whooping-cough, on the other hand, was unusually prevalent and severe in young children in 1941, accounting for 11,000 cases and 286 deaths. This year it has died away. Cerebro-spinal fever, an infe'ction which usually prevails in war-time, caused 408 cases and 84 deaths in 1941 ; this year it is tending to decline. Pulmonary tuberculosis increased rapidly in 1940, when it rose by 21 per cent, over the figure for 1939. The mortality from this disease in 1939 was 861 per million of the population and 1,131 in 1940 ; in 1941 it fell slightly to 1,105 per million. The indica- tions are that the rate will be lower this year. The wave of diphtheria, which was gathering force before the war, reached its peak in Glasgow in 1940, since when the number of cases has declined from 5,190 in 1940 to 4,039 in 1941. The deaths fell from 163 to 155. This year, during