[Report 1956] / Medical Officer of Health, Darlington County Borough.

  • Darlington (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1956
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1956] / Medical Officer of Health, Darlington County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    93/120 (page 3)
    I am not altogether happy about the chronic core of children infested with nits in the hair. Live vermin are rarely detected when staff visit schools but they must clearly have existed on the scalp of every child with nits, otherwise these eggs would not have been laid. In various bad uastances quite a lot of time has been taken bj^ School Nurses in cleansing dirty heads and then unfortunately at a subsequent visit the condition is found to have relapsed. Other members of the family, often somewhat older sisters and sometimes aged persons, have been guilty of spreading the infestation and these people are quite outside the means of control available either by the Education or Health Departments. Turnmg now to illness among children, I am grateful to the Secretary of the Darlmgton and District Hospital Management Committee for continuing to supply me with a list of all children admitted to hospital. It will be observed that admissions for removal of tonsils and adenoids is the largest single item and during the year there has been some controversy in the medical press about the mdications for operation. This, I may say, is a habitual subject for argument among Doctors. In Darlington, there is nothing automatic about the process. Children are rarely referred for operation when first found with tonsfilar enlargement or nasal obstruction. It is recognised that the hyper- trophy of the lymphatic tissue of the pharynx is a reaction to an already existmg morbid process, such as chronic infection of the nose or dental caries. Sometimes such enlargement seems an almost normal phase in juvenile deve- lopment. Moreover the Ear, Nose and Throat Consultant Surgeon, Mr. J. S. C. Monro, sees every case himself and makes his own final decision. Acute Appendicitis and injuries both contribute largely to the total of patients. The former is a disease recognisedly common ui young people, the cause of which remains uncertam. Injuries following accidents of all kinds are in theory preventable and an attempt is bemg made in the Health Depart- ment to follow up accidents m the home and to observe the presence of prevent- able factors in each case. There is probably an irreducible minimum of such incidents among active and lively children and the elimmation of risk altogether would seem no more desirable than possible. Where Infectious Diseases are concerned, some discrepancy may be noted between the figures given under the heading ‘ Children Admitted to Hospital ’ on page (10) and those listed under ‘ Infectious Diseases ’ on page (7). Not all the notified cases are necessarily of course admitted to hospital (the tendency at present is to treat as much Infectious Disease as possible at home) and also the diagnosis given at hospital tends to be that under which the patient is admitted and it may be changed as a result of fuller investigation. The diagnosis in the other context by the Health Department represents the final opinion of the Consultant Physician. It is tragic to record five deaths among children of school age. Two of these were from extremely rare conditions, Metachromatic Leuco-encephalopathy and Endocardial Fibro-elastosis, both of them obscure disorders of congenital origin which may well not be encountered again among Darlington children for a century or more. Another two were due to Cerebral Tumour, one of them certainly of a malignant variety. These may therefore be regarded as cancer deaths and it is important to remember that this malady, though much commoner in the later years of life, takes a not inconsiderable toll from among young people. The greater prominence of such catastrophies is less due to