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I. FIVE YEARS' SURVEY.
The last five years has been the most important quinquennium
for Bermondsey, from a health point of view, since my
appointment to the post of Medical Officer of Health in February,
1901. Chiefly owing to the lessons conveyed by the extraordinarily
efficient medical service during the late war, improvements in
public health generally have followed one another with great
rapidity. These, of course, did not start immediately on the
signing of peace, but only after demobilisation, which was completed
somewhere about 1920-21, and it was about the latter
time that the Public Health Department of Bermondsey was
enabled to show signs of greatly-increased activity.
In 1919 the first big drop in the death rate took place, viz.,
from 22.0 in 1918 to 14.1, and from that date onwards the rate
has varied between 12.1 in 1923, when it was lowest, to a maximum
height of 16.7 in 1922, to fall again to 12.6 in 1925. An
examination of Table I. of the appendix, which was prepared for
the Ministry of Health, will show how the death rate has kept
consistently low since the first date mentioned.
The birth rate has fluctuated very much during the last five
years. In 1920 it was 31.2, and last year 21.6. The infantile
mortality showed a decided drop in 1916. A second drop occurred
in 1919, when it was 99, and it has remained at or below this
point ever since, with the exception of 1922, when it was 102.
In 1920 there was a big epidemic of scarlet fever, and notifications
ran up to 58 in the week ending on the 25th September,
1920. This epidemic continued more or less up to the week ending
8th October, 1921, in which week the notifications of scarlet
fever were 47, and this was followed by a sudden drop at the end
of 1921 to nine notifications in a week. A curious phenomenon,
however, occurred during the week ending the 3rd November,
1921, when the notifications of diphtheria, which up to about that
date had been very much less than those of scarlet fever, suddenly
shot up to 44 in the week. During the years 1922 to 1925
the notifications of diphtheria have remained constantly above
those of scarlet fever, and it looks as if the prevalence of diphtheria
over scarlet fever has come to stay.