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37
It appears therefore that the London School Board succeeded in
their evident desire to thwart the efforts of the Public Health
Authorities to pursue a highly proper and necessary line of action.
The names and addresses of the parents of children who were
not willing that the state of their children as to vaccination should be
learnt promised to be of material value in indicating the direction in
which the enquiries of Vaccination Officers should be directed, but
here again the London School Board took the action of forbidding the
names and addresses to be taken. So on the whole little value, and
I am disposed to think some harm, has resulted from the application
made to the Board, and the danger of School attendance during the
prevalence of Small-pox still remains a very considerable one.
CONSUMPTION (PHTHISIS).
During the year the Council has taken a very important step
with the object of reducing the sickness and death resulting from
Tuberculosis, by making that disease voluntarily notifiable in the
Borough. Pulmonary Tuberculosis (Consumption) causes one-ninth
of all the deaths in Great Britain and one-twelfth of the total deaths
in Stoke Newington, and it accounts for nearly half of all the deaths
between 20 and 25 years of age. If there had been no Consumption
the average length of life for each individual born would have been
lengthened by 2½ years and the working period of life would be
lengthened on the average by very nearly 2 years. The notification
of Consumption has in consequence of the Congress upon Tuberculosis,
which was held during the past year, received a very decided
impetus; for no one of those who were present at the debate upon
this issue questioned the desirability of notification. During the past
year several other London Boroughs have taken a similar action to
Stoke Newington, but Stoke Newington must take the credit of being
the third Metropolitan Borough to adopt this preventive measure.
It is surprising that it has been left so late in the day for Local
Authorities to make some organised attack upon this largely preventable
disease. As one writer has put it, "Try to fancy that some
150,000 of our people are kept in some dreadful bondage, and that
every year some 60,000 of them have to submit to the pain of death