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weighing and undressing room while the small bedroom would make
an ideal medical consulting room. The bathroom could at a trifling
cost be fitted up as a small dispensary.
My proposal is that there should be two consultations during
the week on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of the one which is
held at present. The only additional staff imperatively required
is two additional Health Visitors. With such an addition the
Borough could be divided into four districts each half the size of
the present ones, for only by a reduction of the Health Visitors
districts to a more manageable size than what they have charge
of now will it become possible for them to cultivate the acquaintance
of the mothers and prospective mothers and children under their
charge. Under existing arrangements it is only possible to visit
about two thirds of the newly born infants and that but once —second
visits and the regular following up of cases requiring close supervision
are done only to a very limited extent.
Two Health Visitors would attend the maternity centre on
Tuesdays and the other two on Thursdays, and each Health Visitor
would recommend women and children from their districts to attend
on the days when they would be at the centre themselves. The
task of special medical consultation I propose doing myself, at
least, for the period of the war, and the keeping of records would
devolve on one of the present clerical staff.
The Local Government Board scheme suggests that regular
medical and surgical treatment should be given at maternity centres
but while this is imperative in many provincial districts it is not so in
London on account of the existence of numerous general and special
hospitals. I propose that medical treatment should only be given
in a small number of mild and special cases where either through
poverty or other sufficient reason patients are unable to avail
themselves of the advice of a private medical practitioner or of one
of the hospitals. There are also a certain number of trivial cases of
illness which could be treated without putting them to the inconvenience
of attending a hospital and which would at the same time
relieve the out-patient department, giving them more time to devote
to the more serious cases.