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107
Both Hackney and Bethnal Green inaugurated their Dispensary
schemes during the War, but I have purposely omitted this period
as the figures during this abnormal time are hardly comparable.
It will be seen that during the last 20 years the death rate in
both Boroughs has fallen to less than half.
No less satisfactory is the decline in the number of persons
that contract tuberculosis as shown in the number of notifications.
It has been stated that this decline in the tuberculosis mortality
rate is only a natural wave in an epidemic curve, and has no
relation to the Tuberculosis campaign. Are we to believe that
all recent attempts to provide better housing and improved
economic conditions have been futile, and that Open-air schools,
the boarding-out of children from infected homes, the segregation
of the advanced case, and the teaching of the infectious case how
to prevent the spread of infection, are useless ? Can one dispute
the fact that the onset of poverty in any area is always
panied by an increase in the incidence of tuberculosis ? Perhaps
the most convincing results of any anti-tuberculosis measure
have been obtained by the provision of cleaner milk. Nonpulmonary
tuberculosis, mainly a disease of glands, bones and
joints, and abdominal organs, is in children largely due to bovine
tuberculosis, contracted through infected milk. There is no
doubt that the remarkable fall in this type of disease is largely,
if not entirely, due to improved milk supply.