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custody of the individual who is to use them. They must most certainly
be kept out of the reach of children. It has been a sad story to read
during the year of deaths resulting from children helping themselves to
coloured sugar coated medicinal tablets which they have thought to be
sweets. Such accidents are inexcusable.
A certain number of falls are inevitable in school children and to
restrain them from falling would be to interfere with their development
and their spirit of adventure. These remarks however, do not apply to
babies, adults or the aged. Those responsible for the planning of
houses can help by eliminating differences in levels on the same floor,
by avoidance of the step down into the kitchen or scullery, and designing
stairs which are neither too steep nor too narrow for the aged and the
infirm, and by seeing that steps and staircases are adequately lighted.
Some effort has been made to reduce the number of burn accidents.
Under the Fireguards Act passed during the year under review, it will
become an offence to sell or let out on hire, an electric or gas fire not
fitted with an adequate guard. I would like to see some step taken to
avoid the use of highly inflammable material in the making of clothes
for women and children. Women are particularly liable to accidents
from fires. Whilst leaning forward near a fire, their dress, dressing
gown, or nightdress swings forward and its voluminous folds promptly
ignite.
Old people are liable to upset gas and electric fires and in rooms let
for old people it is safer for fires to be fixed to the wall at a reasonable
height and well guarded. If they must be placed on the floor, a small
asbestos or metal sheet should be placed underneath them.
The essential measure in the prevention of accidents is an awareness
of their causation. This can only be obtained by a study of their
occurrence and the dissemination of the knowledge gained thereby.
Accidents in the home, in the factory, and in the street must be treated
as seriously as an epidemic of infectious disease, with the realisation of
the large extent to which they can and must be prevented.
Those who have a pessimistic turn of mind are inclined to say of
public health efforts that as one disease disappears it is replaced by
another, and to assume that this is cause and effect. It is certainly true
that diphtheria has disappeared almost entirely from our midst and that
rickets and scurvy are conspicuous by their complete absence in serious
form. There have been no cases of smallpox, typhus, typhoid fever or
cholera, and the infant mortality is at a low record. On the other hand,
certain forms of cancer appear to be on the increase, as is coronary
thrombosis and poliomyelitis. If cancer has increased in incidence it
must be remembered that the expectation of life has increased by over
15 years and the percentage of the population in the age group most
liable to cancer is increasing; that if coronary thrombosis has increased
it may be due to the stress of life as we choose to live it today. Had
we not prevented diphtheria, rickets, scurvy, smallpox, typhoid, typhus
and cholera, and lessened infant mortality, our deaths would have been
considerably higher, as would no doubt have been the percentage of
those who suffered from illness.