[Report 1914] / Medical Officer of Health, Holland County Council (Lincolnshire).

  • Holland (England). County Council.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1914] / Medical Officer of Health, Holland County Council (Lincolnshire). Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/54 (page 21)
    diagnosis. Closure, even if only for disinfection, should rarely be necessary when Scarlet Fever or Diphtheria are prevalent, as experience has shown that these diseases can be controlled by other methods. There is great scope for the development of a higher ideal of sanitation in many of the elementary schools in the County area. Improvements are continually being made, but much remains to be done to bring the ventilation, lighting, heating and form of sanitary convenience up to modern standards. The cleaning of the schools and the provision of supplies of drinking water have chiefly occupied my attention hitherto as School Medical Officer, and it is satisfactory to record that in these two particulars a great improvement is noticeable at many of the schools, especially in the provision of clean and efficiently filtered drinking water, obtained from the rain- water supply. ISOLATION HOSPITALS.—There is no change to record in the isolation hospital accommodation available in the County. This accommodation and its deficiencies have been fully des- cribed in previous annual reports and in a special report of x6th March of this year in which suggestions wTere made for its im- provement. Two alternatives were suggested. One was that each of the existing hospitals at Skirbeck, Spalding and Fleet should be provided with an additional wooden pavilion con- taining two wards and ten or twelve beds. By this means the risks caused by the present emergency would be to some extent provided against, beds being made available for either Small Pox or any other exceptional disease that may be imported into any of the County districts in consequence of the war or other- wise, whilst at all other times the accommodation for advanced cases of Tuberculosis, suggested in a succeeding paragraph of this report, would be at the disposal of the County Council. The two disadvantages of this scheme are that the system of small scattered fever hospitals, with their comparative lack of economy and efficiency, would be perpetuated, and that it would be attended by all the drawbacks associated with tem- porary buildings. The Health Committee decided that no immediate steps should be taken and adjourned consideration of the report. The probability now is that, unless some serious infection is actually brought into the County, this scheme will not be adopted. The other and better scheme is for the estab- lishment of one central hospital for the whole County, con-