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94
Hitherto preventive medicine has been concerned with acute illnesses,
and though measures employed for the control of these certainly have
social bearings, they are comparatively simple and may be dictated
from the strictly medical point of view, to which, in urgent illness, all
else readily gives way. The case of acute phthisis, for example, will go
to a sanatorium for six months without demur, and will be ready on
returning to adopt the life of a valetudinarian rather than risk relapse;
to accept charity, or to let the children go short while he, or she, drinks
the milk they should have; to let the wife, or husband, continue overworking
to keep things going, so that infection is likely to occur which
might have been prevented by timely rest or medical advice; to overcrowd
the rest of the family in order to sleep alone, or to use up the
yard where the children should be playing, and darken the kitchen
window by the erection of a sleeping shelter. The fear of such orders
prevents many early cases from applying for advice.
Thus we see social and sanitary sciences playing their part, each
needing the co-operation of the other, and the secret of the former
seeming to lie in the intimate knowledge of problems of poverty which
is obtained through regular visiting combined with careful inquiry into
the causes of distress in individual cases, and into the means of restoring
each family to a normal social position.
Municipal Tuberculosis Dispensary.
Dr. Macdonald reports as follows:—The number of patients examined
at the Dispensary during the year was 997, of whom 410 were males and
587 females. Of this number, 190 were insured and 807 non-insured.
The total attendances made by these patients amounted to 5524.