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5
GENERAL SANITARY REVIEW
Upon taking charge of the health of Bethnal
Green as Acting Medical Officer of Health, various
public health problems arrested my attention, and,
writing at the close of eight months' service the sanitaryhistory
of the year 1925 for this Borough, I feel glad to
have already witnessed the solution of some of these
and I look forward to the near future for the answer
to others.
In a review of this nature the following points
suggest themselves for consideration :—
Tuberculosis.—This subject is particularly sad
to my mind, for it is very disappointing indeed to
realize what small progress has been made towards
stamping out this disease. It is the only infectious
disease in which, practically speaking, no isolation is
attempted, and consequently failure to check it is quite
naturally anticipated. The only way to cure a disease
is to ascertain the cause of it in the first place and to
act upon this knowledge, but in this devastating
infectious disease we do nothing of the kind ! Bovine
Tuberculosis, the principal form of this disease in
children, and which produces innumerable deaths in
children under two years of age, is beyond all question
due to drinking milk containing Tubercle Bacilli—
then why is such milk permitted by law to be sold ?
The draft Regulations of 1926 prohibit imported milk
to be sold if it contains Tubercle Bacilli—but why is
such prohibition restricted to imported milk ? Would
it not be much cheaper and better to make the sale
illegal rather than building large orthopœdic and other
hospitals for the treatment of poor suffering cripples
whose illness is entirely due to drinking tuberculous
milk ? Again, what shall it profit the nation to send
phthisis patients to sanatoria and when they are almost
cured send them to the Relieving Officers, whose