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73
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the Metropolitan
Borough of Stoke Newington.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I beg to submit the report for the year 1935. Details of the
work will be found in the statistical tables on pages 78 and 79, and I
feel that it is unnecessary for me to make any systematic comment
on these. They reveal again that the number of new cases is high,
and also that the proportion of those found to be suffering from
tuberculosis is comparatively small—22.7%. I would also like to
point out that the satisfactory collaboration of the local doctors in
the work of the Dispensary is shown by the fact that they have
referred 84 patients for investigation. The frequent consultations
that take place between the Tuberculosis Officer and the General
Practitioner tend to secure continuity of observation and treatment,
and also to stimulate interest in the clinical manifestations that
may arise during the course of the disease, while the friendly spirit
underlying them is an essential element in the proper functioning
of the anti-tuberculosis scheme as a whole.
Reference to the tables will also indicate what a large proportion
of new cases are contacts, i.e., persons who are examined owing to
the fact that they have been exposed to contagion, but who for the
most part are without any symptoms of illness. At the present time
there is, in my opinion, a tendency to over-estimate the dangers
that healthy persons are liable to incur from contact with those
suffering from Tuberculosis, though from the point of view of the
public health it is only right that such risks should be known in so
far as they exist. On the other hand, it is an additional burden to
the sufferings of the patient himself if he is made to feel that his
presence is undesirable and that he may be regarded by his relatives
at home, or his associates at work, as an actual, instead of only a
potential, source of danger. There seems little doubt but that the
consumptive, if he conscientiously follows out the instructions which
he receives in the sanatorium or from the officials at the Dispensary,
need no longer be looked upon as the outcast that he is depicted
by the popular press. Indeed it was truly said by a well-known