Fifty years in public health : a personal narrative with comments / by Sir Arthur Newsholme.

  • Newsholme, Arthur, Sir, 1857-1943.
Date:
[1935]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Fifty years in public health : a personal narrative with comments / by Sir Arthur Newsholme. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    159/450 (page 141)
    This remark followed a tabular statement of sanitary work carried out during the year. The point is one which in later years I have repeatedly emphasised. Vast sanitary improvement has been secured as the result of notices of work required which have been served on owners and on occupiers of property; but still more extensive and important are the improvements in cleanliness, ventilation, etc., suggested and recommended by sanitary inspectors in friendly conversation with tenants and owners, and never needing to be supplemented by statutory demands. This has been a very important factor in improved domestic hygiene during the last half-century. The more recent work of health visitors has exerted a still more marvellous influence in correcting and improving the personal habits of mothers and their children. During my tenure of office as m.o.h. in Clapham I was responsible for three Special Reports, in two of which I was acting in co-operation with my five colleagues. Each summer we were faced with the terrible mortality from summer diarrhoea, and in 1885 we produced a joint report in which we emphasised high temperature as a chief factor in its causation, showing by comparative figures that a high temperature of the River Thames and a deficient rainfall went with excessive diarrhoea. We stressed the importance of a constant supply of water (unstored in domestic cisterns) and of better flushing of sewers; and in a final sentence we stated: The fact that epidemic diarrhoea is almost confined to hand-fed children illustrates the lack of cleanliness in feeding children, and the importance of boiling all drinking water and milk. In 1887 we wrote a joint report beginning with the remark that the extreme desirability of notification of all cases of the more serious infectious diseases was now generally recog¬ nised. In this report we set out the benefits derivable from such notification, and appended a table of the information collected by us from forty-four towns in England and Wales in which