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Of these cases, many are new, all have been visited and helped
to make arrangements to go away for the period of treatment
recommended.
Often complete outfits of clothing have been obtained, children
have been placed in homes in cases where the mother is the patient and
could not otherwise have accepted treatment.
Where the breadwinner is the patient, the maintenance of the
family has been arranged for.
When the case is a new one these first visits are important—there
is much to accomplish. The patient has to be made to realise that
the personal and intimate enquiries that have to be made are being
asked in their interests and that the Care Committee is a body that
strives to help and to make things easier for them, and perhaps this is
a suitable moment to pay tribute to our Deptford people—they are so
very generally friendly and trustful, and appreciative of anything done
for them.
With each of these new cases, unless it is obviously one that has
come to us too late, in spite of many and constant disappointments,
we hope that at least a measure of health may be regained, and maintained.
In due course these patients return from the period of
institutional treatment prescribed. Some there are for whom it is
obvious little can be done except to make things as easy as possible
for them until the inevitable end comes. Others are very much
improved in health and with a reasonable chance of keeping moderately
well provided that they can lead the right sort of life.
During 1927, 179 patients were discharged from hospitals and
sanatoria. In each case their very problematical future was discussed
by the Care Committee who would like to do so much—and, in view
of existing conditions can do so little—to solve the big problem of
the future of patients returning from sanatoria: and at this stage, to
speak frankly, we are no longer optimistic. The subject is, we know,
at the moment, receiving the consideration of thoughtful men and
women and we feel that there is little doubt but that some solution
will be evolved in time. Unfortunately the remedy of the future does
not assuage the pain of the present. Readers are aware of the conditions
existing in many of the homes to which these patients return—
our Medical Officer we know will not let them forget them—and it