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8
should be prescribed with the utmost caution to pregnant women.
This last decade has seen an enormous increase in the amount of
drugs consumed for all sorts of purposes. The discoveries made
in the realm of pharmacology in the last 25 years have been almost
beyond belief and yet there is still a place in medicine one would
hope, for the natural recuperative capacity of living tissue and for
the individual patient to accept some responsibility for, and make
some contribution towards, his or her own recovery. In the
majority of maladies nature can still effect a cure unaided if given
sufficient encouragement.
Last year it was noted that the total notifications of infectious
diseases were the lowest in the history of the Borough. The year
under review is a "measles" year and this is reflected in the
number of notifications. However, if one excludes measles one
finds a further substantial decrease in tuberculosis, dysentery,
whooping cough, infantile diarrhoea and pneumonia. The Borough
was free from diphtheria and small-pox but there was a case of
typhoid and paratyphoid, both acquired on the Continent.
The introduction of the poly-valent poliomyelitis live oral
vaccine is another effective instrument in individual and community
immunisation and in the controlling of any epidemic incident.
The work at present being done on virus anti-bodies, one of which
is known as " Interferon," gives hope that before long virus diseases
will be as effectively controlled in the individual patients as most
of the bacterial diseases have been subjugated by the wide-spectrum
antibiotics.
There were only 37 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis last year,
the lowest ever recorded, and there were 6 deaths. This achievement
is a further tribute to the preventive and promotive work of
the Chest Clinic at Maze Hill, complementing the many environmental
improvements over the years which to a substantial degree
are the result of the efforts of the District Public Health Inspectors.
Statistics are apt to be accepted passively without a realisation of
the preliminary work involved in effecting improvements in basic
living standards so intimately linked with the general improvement
in health and longer expectation of life.
Diseases of the heart and arteries accounted for a high proportion
of total deaths reported, followed closely by malignant
conditions particularly of the lung, stomach and intestinal tract.
For the first time in many years the number of deaths from lung
cancer dropped. It is doubtful if this is a permanent trend for it
is not reflected in the national figures. Mention has been made in
previous reports regarding the correlation between heavy cigarette
smoking and incidence of lung cancer. In this connection the