[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Tottenham].

  • Tottenham (England). Borough Council.
Date:
[1942]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Tottenham]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/22 (page 4)
    4 Ophthalmic Clinic, During the year there was a total of 486 errors of refraction, including 58 children suffering from squint. In 349 instances spectacles were prescribed, and in every case these were obtained. The difficulty usually experienced in causing a sensitive school child to wear spectacles was minimised by a periodic checking on the part of the school nurses, and by ensuring through the medium of Toddler Clinics, that treatment was instituted before the child actually commenced attendance at school. In many instances, a potential squint was treated before -the actual development of asymmetry, thus forestalling all risk of amblyopia at a later date. Aural Clinic. The Visiting Aural Surgeon, Dr, Clarke, reports that The Aural Clinic has been carried on without interruption during the year 1941 at the Municipal Medical Centre, Park Lane. For the greater part of the year there was one session weekly - (a wartime measure) - but as the numbers increased towards the latter end of the year it was decided to revert to the original two sessions weekly. One of these, once a fortnight, is now devoted to the special treatment of tcnsils by Tonsil Suction. For the first five months of the year there was a rather large number of absentees from the Treatment Clinics, no doubt largely due to the continued air raids and evacuation during this period. As conditions quietened down during the latter half of the year, the attendances noticeably improved. As a fixed objective, for some time, special attention has been given to the sorting out, and detection of pre disposing causes of' aural and nasal troubles in pre-school children. In 1941, 42 pre-school children were examined and prescribed for at the Clinic for nasal def ects, alone , This is an increase of 40 over t.he normal pre-war year of 1938. Whether it is just a coincidence or not, a parallel fall has occurred in the number of similar group children seen for Acute Otitis (middle ear inflammation). There were 4 in 1941 as against 28 in 1938. There is no doubt that the best way of treating Otitis or ear inflammation in children is by prevention, and as practically all acute ear troubles in young children arise through predisposing factors in the nasal mechanism, the early detection and efficient treatment of these nasal factors is the method of choice towards prevention. There has been a steady decline in the number of cases of Chronic Otorrhoea, The total number seen at the Clinic for the year was only 29, and of these 11 were cases where a radical mastoid operation had been done, in some cases, years previously. The tendency to chronicity in this type of case is well known. Zinc Ionisation has been the main method of treatment and its results i.n our experience, far outweigh that of any other known to us. We wish again to emphasise the great importance of including infants and pre-school children in the scheme of approved aural and nasal treatment.