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106
which must be borne by everyone. Moreover, public health legislation
and services curtail individual liberty, and people will consent to these
expenses and inconveniences only when they are health-conscious.
Throughout the past year the work of public health education has
gone on steadily, and we have good grounds for hope that personal and
social hygiene are increasingly better understood and appreciated in
practice throughout the Borough than ever before. The subjects chosen
by various groups have extended from the care of the body to the care
of the mind, from practical hygiene to "From infancy to age." Public
interest in recent discussions concerning diet and disease has been reflected
in the demand for lectures on "Food and Drink," "The Study of Food
Values," "Common Errors in Diet," etc. In this way the results of
the latest research are being made available for all, and the way to health
is seen to lie less through the bottle of medicine than through a way of
living and an organisation of personal life in habits which make for
health. Not only chronic diseases, but the condition vaguely called
ill-health, may not infrequently yield to comparatively simple measures
when these are understood and personally applied; much of existing
disease is quite unnecessary, and while we rightly treat sickness and
disease when they appear, the need of imagination and good sense which
will spend money on promoting good health through understanding is
even more urgent.
The opportunity for questions follows each lecture, and a brisk
discussion generally takes place, which reveals both a desire to learn
and an appreciation of this educational service provided by a far-sighted
Health Authority. Again and again I have been impressed by the
genuine enthusiasm with which knowledge has been received, and the
regrets that such information was not available long ago, when there
would have been more years left in which to profit by it. The fact that
many meetings demand a health lecture at regular intervals is in itself
a testimony to the wide recognition that here is a demand being met
which touches the life of man, woman and child, personally and in
community; it is a demand for fuller life through knowledge to power.