View report page

77
Special interest attaches to this First Report, dealing,
as it does, with the commencing working of a Scheme,
which depends upon a combined effort on the part of a
Municipal and of a Hospital Authority. Hitherto, the
Hospital Authorities have dealt with disease as met with
in the individual, and not as it affects the community, as
a whole, and much valuable help and material have,
consequently, been wasted, or at least, diverted, in so
far as Public Health Administration was concerned. The
treatment and control of tuberculosis appears to be a
subject specially suitable for the trial of a combined effort
—the linking up of voluntary and official agencies, and
this principle was, therefore, adopted as the basis of the
Lambeth Scheme, and approved by the Local Government
Board and the National Insurance Commissioners,
and is now being adopted, after approval by the Local
Government Board and the London County Council, in
connection with other Tuberculosis Schemes.
The two Dispensaries are administered and
worked on the same lines, and the patients are
interchangeable between the two, as may be found
necessary, whilst the resources of the one are open to
the other, a valuable arrangement, in so far as Lambeth
Borough is concerned, having regard to the fact that
St. Thomas's Hospital is well organised and equipped
with all modern appliances and special departments
(pathological, dental, chemical, laryngological. X-ray,
etc.), whilst the services of the well known consulting
Medical and Surgical Staffs of the Hospital may be requisitioned,
as required, by the Tuberculosis Medical
Officers. Further, a ten-bed Ward is attached to the
St. Thomas's Hospital Tuberculosis Department, for
observation and treatment purposes.
The record of work carried out by the Tuberculosis
Medical Officers, as shewn in their Joint Report,
speaks for itself, and the details given under the
various headings and tabies will prove of interest,
more especially those dealing (1) with the working
capacities of the patients before and after treatment,
i.e., the practical results obtained, measured by the
maintenance, or otherwise, of the working capacity of
such patiente and (2) the systematic examinations of
“contacts”.