[Report 1955] / Medical Officer of Health and School Medical Officer of Health, Derbyshire County Council.

  • Derbyshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1955
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Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1955] / Medical Officer of Health and School Medical Officer of Health, Derbyshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I would conclude this section of my report by quoting from an excellent article by Dr. D. Thompson entitled “Tuberculosis—The Changing Emphasis,” which appeared in June 1956 in the Monthly Bulletin of the Ministry of Health and the Public Health Laboratory Service:— “Discussion. The most feasible explanation of the course of tuberculosis, as it has affected England and Wales, is that an epidemic wave spread over the country in the eighteenth century, reaching its peak around 1810. This high incidence was largely brought about by the deterioration in living conditions which arose during the Industrial Revolution. Then people flocked from the country into the towns, where, as is so graphically described by the Hammonds in their classic “The Town Labourer 1760-1832”, they lived in squalid, overcrowded dwellings and worked in dark, insanitary factories. In these circumstances, contacts between persons were close, allowing the infection to pass freely. Probably, too, the imigrants’ nutrition did not reach the same standard as in their former rural surroundings. Most of these workers had no natural resistance to tuberculosis, and so rapidly fell victims to the infection. Budd later noticed the same phenomenon in natives of West Africa, who came to work in the docks at Bristol, and the present-day counterparts are the tuberculin-negative Irish immigrants who come to live in London or in the cities of the industrial Midlands. Osier reminded that tuberculosis is “a social disease with medical aspects” and Bradbury (1933) in his survey of Jarrow and Blaydon, showed that tuberculosis and overcrowding are statistically related. Poverty was, however, more important and appeared to be a cause of the infection rather than a result. So, it is not surprising that as, in the course of the nineteenth century, housing and general social conditions slowly improved, leading on to better nutrition and a more sensitive communal conscience, the incidence of the infection declined. This fall was, no doubt, also helped by the elimination of those most susceptible; the isolation of the most infectious ; and a widespread acquiring of natural immunity.” BLINDNESS AND PARTIAL SIGHTEDNESS For several years the Ministry of Health has requested that the report should contain a short section relating to blind and partially sifted persons. In 1952 I reported on the number of registered blind persons in the County to the Blind Welfare Sub-Committee of the County Welfare Committee setting out statistics showing the position from 1929-1951. These statistics have been condensed and brought up to date, and are given below so that a record may readily be available of the number of registered blind persons in the County.