London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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Bermondsey 1924

Report on the sanitary condition of the Borough of Bermondsey for the year 1924

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and Dr. Connan, the Deputy Medical Officer of Health, was appointed
to be in charge and a clerk was appointed to assist in the work.
I think I am right in saying that the Bermondsey Borough Council
is the first Public Health Authority deliberately to take up this
subject as a specialty. I am quite aware that many Sanitary
Authorities all over the country have printed posters and had lectures
on special public health matters, but I do not think that any Sanitary
Authority has done it on the scale on which we started and have
carried on. (On page 33 will be found a full report on the subject.)
I do not think any Sanitary Authority ever took up a more important
matter. My attention was first directed to the value of education
in hygiene when I was asked to give a report on this matter to the
Guy's Hospital Medical School when they were re-organising the
teaching of various medical subjects after the war. I do not think
the profession realised what could be done in preventive work until
after the war, and the great impetus which preventive medicine
received from the excellent team work of the Royal Army Medical
Corps during the war is one of the good things which resulted from
the many evils of that struggle. I thought at that time that if the
profession themselves required teaching in the preventive side of medicine,
then the public must want it too, and a small commencement
was made by writing a series of articles on health matters for the
Southwark and Bermondsey Recorder. To Dr. Alfred Salter must
be given credit for persuading the Committee to embark on a much
bigger scheme, and this is succeeding beyond the expectations of us
all. A special van has been made for giving kinema displays during
our streetcorner talks, and the audiences have been not only numerous
—various counts showing from 300 to 500 —but the hearers have
been most interested in what has been said. Lectures have also been
given to children and adults both in the Town Hall and the schools,
and a " Multiposter " sign, which shows a dozen consecutive pictures,
has been installed at the corner of Grange Road and Tower Bridge
Road, and three sets of twelve pictures have already been exhibited
and a fourth set is about to be installed. Very extensive programmes
have been provided for the coming winter. The principal lecturer