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12
environmental hygiene and that many persons were missing the
benefits which the expanding medical sciences were able to
bestow. An Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration
was appointed. This Committee reported in 1904
and made recommendations from which the personal health
services developed. Their value is seen in the falls in the
infantile and maternal mortality rates and the attack rates of
infectious disease (e.g., Diphtheria). The booklet, "The
Personal Health Services of the Westminster City Council,
1903-1948," describes their evolution in Westminster. In this
it can be seen how rapidly and fully the City Council met its
responsibilities.
Simultaneously with the development of the personal health services,
the sanitary condition of the City was continuously being
improved. With the advances of technology and the extension
of legal safeguards the standards of the environmental health
services have continued to rise. This can be seen in the comparison
between the Council's first housing scheme of Regency
Street and their post-war schemes of Russell House and Churchill
Gardens, both in the quality and the size of the undertakings.
There are many other examples, improvements in restaurant
kitchens, factories, street cleanliness, dairies, bakehouses, and
the great decrease in food adulteration, particularly milk. All
this has not been achieved without hard and continuous work
on the part of many people. Just as the benefits of earlier
sanitary reform were not at first obvious, so the value of the
later improvements is not always realised now.
During the past quarter of a century the peoples in many lands have
suffered much affliction both physical and psychological. The
fever of ideological warfare and nationalist aspirations does not
tend to further the promotion of public health and well being in
the countries so affected. Fortunately in this country a freer
atmosphere has enabled measures for improving public health
to develop steadily. Social legislation has created a framework
by which the economic consequences to the individual of
sickness, continued incapacity, bereavement and unemployment
can be mitigated. Such misfortunes have a retarding influence
on public health as well as the psychological disturbance caused
by the fears of war, and the associated threats of physical and
moral destruction.
In this country the fall in the birthrate and the very success of
preventive medicine has resulted in an ageing population with a
rapidly increasing proportion of old people. Meanwhile in some
other countries the populations are rapidly increasing but without
comparable increases in food production. This situation is
ominously occurring in countries where many people already
live on a starvation diet. In addition to these problems, great
social changes are accompanying the economic and industrial