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66
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Metropolitan Borough
of Stoke Newington.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the report for the year 1933. There has once
more been no change in the system of work adopted in the Department,
and though it may perhaps be desirable in the future to
rearrange somewhat the hours of the evening sessions, no necessity
for any radical alteration in the routine is likely.
The chief functions of a Tuberculosis Dispensary may be
summarised as follows :—
(1) To act as a centre for consultation.
(2) To arrange for treatment.
(3) To supervise the home conditions of the patients.
(4) To instruct patients and others in measures to be taken
for the prevention of the spread of the disease.
(5) In conjunction with the Care Committee to be responsible
as far as possible for the general social welfare and
after-care of patients.
I propose in this report to summarise briefly under the above
headings the manner in which such functions have been carried
out in this Dispensary.
(1) The Dispensary as a Consultation Centre.—During
the year, 279 new cases were sent up for examination, the number
being a high one in relation to the population in the area from
which the patients are drawn. As a reference to the statistical
tables on pages 72 and 73 will show, of these cases 66 were found
to be suffering from tuberculosis, pulmonary or surgical, while in
203 no evidence of this disease was discovered. It might seem
that the fact that such a large number of non-tuberculous persons
present themselves would imply that unnecessary work is undertaken
in their examination. This, in my judgment, is not necessarily
the case, as the more new patients seen, the more likely it
is that persons with incipient disease will be discovered; while
it is certain that a medical overhaul, besides in many cases setting
at rest doubts and anxieties which cannot but predispose to ill-