View report page

49
WOMAN INSPECTOR'S REPORT.
Re work in connection with cases of Contiimption voluntarily notified during the
year 1908.
To the Medical Officer of Health.
Sir,
I submit a report on the work done during the year 1908 in connection
with the voluntary notification of consumption.
The work of the past year has agreed in its more important features witli
that of the previous year, and much of the report relating to 1907 might be
repeated with reference to 1908.
Few notifications were received from Mount Vernon during 1908 owing to
heavy pressure of work at that Institution. It is hoped that this interruption
of notification may be merely temporal y. Brompton Hospital has begun to
notify cases, and expresses willingness to treat relations of patients notified
who are affected by the disease.
As before, the great mass of notifications come from the Poor Law
Authorities.
The connection of the disease with poverty and under-feeding is again very
marked. In addition to the eases notified as having " no home," and to the
cases coming from Rowton Houses and Common Lodging Houses, there
were eighteen cases in which the patients' health was stated to have first
broken down through privation resulting from lack of employment, or from
earnings insufficient to meet the needs of the patient and his family.
Further accommodation for patients, especially for the more respectable, is
still urgently needed. It does not seem to be understood how greatly these
persons suffer when forced into association with the disreputable and undesirable.
No matter how excellent the discipline and supervision of a Workhouse
Infirmary may be, it cannot entirely dispose of those erudities and coarsenesses
of speech and conduct among the patients of the lowest type which add terribly
to the miseries of those of a better type ; and this, too, at a time when every
susceptibility to discomfort and annoyance is sharpened by long and wearing
disease.
Since the segregation of patients is pressed as a measure beneficial to the
community, and not solely to the patient himself, it seems reasonable to ask
that the measures taken to that end should be as little objectionable to the
patient as possible.
This view involves no reflection oil the management and methods of the
Infirmaries. W arm appreciation is frequently expressed by patients and
their friends of the care and kindness received from Officers of the Poor Law
Authorities.