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THE HEALTH OF BARKING
The midwife arrives: the anxious father carries the apparatus
that will save his wife pain.
healthy infants where it does no harm under normal conditions. When conditions
are adverse for the child; when nutrition is poor, or clothing unsuitable ; housing
is bad or where there is lack of fresh air and sunlight; or when, above all, proper
parental care is lacking, then the child's resistance is lowered and the germs are
free to spread and cause pneumonia in the lung.
The great improvement in the incidence of pneumonia is to be expected along
these general lines but it is likely that infected ears and tonsils play a part and that
iron deficiencies in infants causes a lowered resistance to respiratory infections too.
Maternity Service.
Midzvifery. Until 1936, there was no statutory duty laid on ' supervising
authorities' to secure an adequate midwifery service. In Barking, however, to
which ' supervising authority' has been delegated, midwives have been employed
since 1919, and in 1923 an agreement was entered into with the Plaistow Maternity
Charity to undertake this work for the Council. Long before this, the passing of
the Midwives Act, 1902, laid a duty on the authorities to control the practice of
midwifery; a duty not always easy to perform. "One woman was prosecuted for
practising without being registered and was bound over not to practice," wrote the
Medical Officer of Health so long ago as 1911.
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