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properly understood by the public. To make such conditions known has
been for some time the policy of the Poplar Public Health Committee by
means of Health Lectures, available for any audience of men and women,
boys and girls. The Committee has wisely recognised that its work includes
not only the provision of Maternity and Child Welfare Clinics, the
inspection of food, facilities for vaccination, and the hundred and one
ways in which the health of the community is preserved, but the education
of the people in the functioning of their bodies, the influence of their
environment, the causes of the spread of disease, and the many ways in
which each individual, no less than social group, can tread the way
towards a young old-age and guard body and mind against disease and
incapacity, which sometimes insidiously creep on. By means of such
educational work public apathy and quiescence are disturbed, ignorance
banished, the ideal raised, and a social sensitiveness created, which
regards dirt as an indecency, defective ventilation a reproach, and adequate
sleeping accommodation a necessity. In the words of Dr. W. Leslie
Mackenzie, the phrase, ''Medical Officer of Health," is the embodiment
of a new synthetic idea, which, on analysis, is no other than the transformation
of cure into prevention, or rather the absorption of cure as a
factor in prevention. The ''Doctor of medicine'' becomes once more the
teacher of health, the expounder of remedies. But the remedies are no
longer applied to individuals alone; they include the whole sweep of the
environment as it affects the individual, and the individual as he is to be
fitted to make his environment.
In all teaching there are three factors involved, viz., the teacher,
the matter which is taught, and those who learn. We can most surely
say that the progressive Public Health Authority and the enlightened
Medical Officer of Health are able to provide competent teachers. The
advances in medical science, both preventive and curative, within the
last 20 years form one of the great epochs in man's history and, reading
like a romance, provide material which should stir the enthusiastic
co-operation of all intelligent citizens. A glance at the syllabus of
lectures, which are offered free of cost to any audience within the Borough
of Poplar, and which deal with problems of the Child, Youth, the Mother,
the Body in Health and Disease, and various subjects such as Social
Hygiene, Mental Hygiene, the Wonder of Health, the Story of Preventive
Medicine, will give some idea of the richness and variety of the material
which is available for all who will take advantage of it. As in all
education, the main problem is neither the teacher, nor the material, but
the reaching of those who will most profit by them. There is room for
improvement in this respect. While some organisations have taken