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160
HEALTH SOCIETY FOR LAMBETH.
The Council considered during 1907, the advisability of
establishing a Health Society for the Borough of Lambeth, the
object of such society being to popularise and propagate sanitary
kuowledge amongst all classes, and to instruct or educate the
people as to the best way in which to make use of the advantages
provided by the Borough Council for their sanitary betterment,
thereby supplementing the work of the Health Department. There
are many ways in which sanitary knowledge can be popularised,
and whereby health conditions can be improved, e.g., visiting and
teaching mothers and others the simple laws of domestic hygiene
(including the proper feeding and management of infants),
temperance and thrift; the distribution of leaflets, dealing with
the prevention of consumption; diarrhoea, infantile mortality,
measles and whooping-cough; and the teaching and instruction
of district visitors attached to the various churches and chapels
throughout the Borough. The local clergy and others who are
associated with the organisations and societies at present
engaged in district visiting, expressed approval of the suggested
scheme, but the Council did not agree, the Town Clerk stating
the Council had no legal power to vote money out of the Rates
for such a purpose as the establishment or inauguration of a
Health Society.
Such a Health Society would prove a most useful educational
force in the Borough, and a valuable auxiliary to the Sanitary
Authority.
As an alternative scheme, the appointment was suggested of
an official Health Visitor, acting under the Public Health Department,
whose duties should consist of visiting houses in which births
have been notified or registered, and ill which measles, whoopingcough
and diarrhoea have broken out amongst the inmates, and