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To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth
Your Worship, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to present to you the annual report on the
health of the Borough of Lambeth for the year 1956.
This year marked the centenary of the appointment of the first
Medical Officer of Health to the Parish of Lambeth, which was
practically identical in its boundaries with the present borough.
He was Dr William Odling who was appointed to the office on the
1st February, 1856, just over 100 years prior to my taking up
the duties of Medical Officer of Health on 23rd May,1956. Another
appointment, made on 8th February, 1856, about which I must
confess to some personal curiosity, was that of John Summers as
the first Inspector of Nuisances, a forerunner of the present
day Public Health Inspector.
In 1857, the first annual report of the Medical Officer of
Health on his work and that of his two Inspectors was recorded
on two pages of the 27 page Annual Report of the proceedings of
the Vestry of Lambeth A reproduction of this report appears on
pages 56 and 57.
A centenary is usually a time for looking back, reviewing the
changes that have taken place and noting what achievements there
have been in the hundred years which have passed. The processes
of public health normally operate at a much slower rate than
those of curative medicine so that from year to year there appears
to be little or no change
A century of public health as depicted in the annual reports
of successive Medical Officers of Health of the Parish and later
the Borough of Lambeth shows a remarkable story of achievement,
so much so that it is difficult to know what particular aspect
to pick out for comment.
Perhaps the most striking change is adecline in deaths from
infectious disease, and most of the credit for this can go to
those public health pioneers who introduced measures to control
the spread of the disease and improve the environment of the
people.
It is true that in latter years the discovery of sulphonamide
drugs and the antibiotics have contributed to the decreased
mortality from these diseases but most of the improvement in
this field had taken place before these drugs were known In
successive reports of Medical Officers in the latter part of the
nineteenth century one reads that 20 to 25% of the mortality was
due to acute infectious diseases. This year there were 16 deaths
from these diseases out of a total of 2,389 deaths.