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5. The supervision of tuberculous cases from a public health
standpoint, including the correction of sanitary defects reacting
adversely on the patient's condition and progress.
This matter is dealt with fully in the annual report for 1911.
Where the public health measures desirable are, in practice,
found to be impossible of achievement, the patient may be shown
how, under the circumstances actually prevailing, he can best
order his life for his own benefit and for the protection of those
around him.
6. The establishment of a special open air school for tuberculous
children.
Such schools may be seen in active work at Kensal House,
Harrow Road, and in Regent's Park, where they have been
instituted by Voluntary Societies, with the co-operation of the
Education Department of the London County Council.
The Tuberculosis Dispensary.
The active staff of a tuberculosis dispensary consists of one or
more medical officers, nurses and voluntary workers.
The Medical Officer visits the homes of patients to:—
1. Ensure that his instructions, given to the patient at the
dispensary, are all being carried out.
2. Advise the patient, in his own tenement, with its own
attendant difficulties of space and accommodation, how best to
carry out home treatment and to instruct the rest of the family
and the relatives how best to avoid infection.
3. To examine all the other members of the patient's family,
known as "contacts," so that the early cases may be recognised
and cured while they are still curable, without interfering with
their occupation. In this way, chronic infecting cases are discovered
which have hitherto been unrecognised or treated as
cases of "influenza," or "chronic bronchitis." This routine
examination of contacts has been called "The March Past."