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37
infirm or housebound. During the course of the year efforts were made
by LOPWA to buiid up a body of friendly people who would undertake
to visit regularly in their own neighbourhood. This work is making
slow progress and volunteers are still urgently needed. During the year
domestic helps were supplied by the LCC to 626 old people in the
borough.
A further service which the borough was able to expand during the
year was for that small number of old people living at home whose
infirmity is such as to make them incontinent of urine or faeces. These
cases are often distressing to the relatives and other people living in
the house and, above all in most cases, to the old persons themselves.
Difficulties arise in the laundering of soiled sheets and bedclothes and
commercial laundries are often loth to undertake such work regularly.
The Council, however, is able to help because under section 122 of
the Public Health (London) Act they have powers which cover most
of these cases. Accordingly, whenever a case is reported to us, whether
by LOPWA, the district nurse, the sanitary inspector or otherwise,
the Council gives free service in cases where s. 122 applies. This is a
help which has been highly appreciated where it has been used. Cases
for aid in this way have not so far been actively sought, because of the
limited facilities available at the disinfection and cleansing station, but
if the proposals of the committee bear fruit the facilities will be increased
during 1951, and more active steps will be taken to find out all the
persons in the borough who can be helped. Many of those in the early
stages of incontinence make efforts to hide their condition, but it has
been found that with improvement in physical condition (such as by
overcoming a minor ailment or by improving nutrition) many old
people who are incontinent, even doubly incontinent, can be cured of
their incontinence. Accordingly, when the Council decided to make
facilities under s. 122 available, I wrote to the local hospital group
management committee to find out if it were proposed to set up geriatric
facilities in the local hospitals, as I would have liked to have had a
scheme whereby certain incontinent persons were taken into hospital
for a short period for treatment. Such cases would I hoped be regarded
as priority cases for admission, and for our part we would not expect
them to be kept in hospital more than a relatively short time during
which they would be reeducated. Unfortunately, however, the reply
received indicated that there was no geriatrician appointed by the
regional hospital board to the Lewisham group of hospitals and also
no special accommodation for the care and training of incontinent
aged persons could be provided. I thereupon took the matter up with
the regional hospital board, but so far no final decision can be reported.
Meteorology and atmospheric pollution
It is wellknown that weather and climate have an effect on disease
even if that word is only taken in its literal meaning, namely the opposite
of ease, but many sufferers go further. For example, quite a proportion
of patients with "rheumatism" say they can tell when a change in
the weather is on its way. Many people, whether suffering from an
organic disease or not, feel much better in warm, sunny weather and,
conversely, feel physically miserable in cold damp weather. A correlation