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To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the
Borough of Hornsey.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report on the
Health of the Borough for the year ending December 31st, 1937.
The arrangement and contents of annual health reports are
prescribed by the Minister of Health in a circular of twelve
foolscap pages of printed matter. This report follows the suggested
arrangement in every detail except one—namely, in regard
to Maternity and Child Welfare. This work, carried on under a
separate Committee— the Maternity and Child Welfare Committee—is
so large and important a branch of preventive medicine
that it has been taken out of Section B (General Provision of
Health Services for the area) and appears as a separate section.
The vital statistics— birth-rate, death-rate and infantmortality
rate (Table A)—do not show any significant difference
from those of preceding years. In a Borough in which conditions
of life are stable, and where sanitary and health services have
been maintained at a high level for years, it would indeed be
surprising if violent fluctuations occurred in the vital statistics.
It is the duty of the Medical Officer of Health to note
specially in his Annual Report "any causes of sickness or
invalidity which have been specially noteworthy in the area
during the year." This duty is generally understood to refer
specially to outbreaks of illness of an infectious nature, e.g., an
exceptionally high incidence of diphtheria or scarlet fever or
measles or whooping-cough or the occurrence of an outbreak of
typhoid fever or of food poisoning. There is fortunately seldom
anything of special note to record in these directions in Hornsey.
The year under review is no exception.
Yet in another direction, not usually regarded as coming
within the scope of an annual health report, the position appears
to be not so happy. I refer to the very important matter of
mental health. While certain infectious diseases have been
eradicated entirely and others are coming slowly but surely under
control; while the average nutrition of the population has
improved considerably and life on the physical side has been