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97
Unless the patients were regularly seeking advice from a medical man, or
had for some time regularly attended one hospital, it has been my custom during
this year to advise them to attend the Dispensary for Tuberculosis, attached to
the Royal Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, City Road. A large number have
very gladly availed themselves of this opportunity, and I have, therefore, in
accordance with your instructions ceased to visit them, the officers of the
Dispensary undertaking all the home-visiting that is required.
Two hundred and forty notifications sent related to those previously not
known to me.
Of these:—
a. One hundred and eight referred to adult women ;
b. One hundred and thirty-two referred to children up to fourteen years
and girls from fourteen to sixteen years.
a. Fifty-six adult women were insured persons. Twenty-two of these have,
to my knowledge, been to State sanatoria for treatment; the majority remaining
there for three months. It is difficult to say until a longer time has elapsed
whether or not this treatment will permanently benefit these patients.
Of the insured who applied for sanatorium benefit, three were refused.
One has since been admitted to a private institution belonging to a religious
order; the others remain at home, apparently in much the same condition as
before. Three patients have made arrangements for admission to sanatoria independently
of State Insurance; two of these were not insured.
b. Of those under sixteen years—
Twenty have to my knowledge, been admitted to sanatoria or convalescent
homes ; eleven of these entered the Infirmary, and were sent on from there, nine
were dealt with by the Invalid Children's Aid Association and other societies
interested in social welfare.
Fifty four were suffering from some form of tuberculosis other than
phthisis, and several of these patients were found, on enquiry, to have been
afflicted for a long while, sometimes for years, and to have already had longer
or shorter periods of treatment as in-patients of hospitals or convalescent homes;
often the parents and even the patients had come to accept the maimed or
crippled condition as an unalterable state of affairs. In such cases, where the
patient was already occupying a separate bed, there was little that could be done
beyond informing the parents of the infectious nature of the disease, and the
possibility of its appearance in the same or any form in other members of the same
family. In that event it is to be hoped that the warning given will induce
parents to seek prompt and early treatment.
(174) G