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The Health of Barking
The upshot of the whole matter was that, at a time convenient to John, he was
invited, much to his not inconsiderable amazement, to see the Medical Officer of
Health, who, knowing what John was coming about, actually had on his table one
of his reports, in which he himself had stoutly maintained the value of both food
and housing and had indeed placed food higher than housing itself.
It would ill-behove any Medical Officer in Barking not to proclaim from the
house-tops the value of environment in promoting Public Health.
There can be no doubt that the abatement of over-crowding has had an
enormous effect on the reduction of the incidence of disease. I refer not only to
reduction in the overcrowding of houses, but reduction in the concentration of
people in any particular area. In this matter, I would like to enter a warning that
crowding a large number of people together—men, women and children—into a
small area by the erection of tall flats is going to bring the problem of overcrowding
back to us.
I think that John, at the end of our little talk, was convinced that we were as fully
alive to the problem of social environment as may be, and that if we believed also
in immunisation and other public health measures, it was only because we believed
they were something which could be added to the fundamental problem of improving
the home and its diet.
As to whether John will be able to convince Mary, remains to be seen, but
somehow I think he will and, what is more, Mary will find that the vast majority
of mothers are getting their babies immunised and she won't want her baby to be at
a disadvantage compared with those of other people.
If anybody goes to the Public Library and looks at the Report of the Medical
Officer of Health of Barking over the years, it will become abundantly clear that
the number of cases of death from diphtheria is becoming very small indeed.
Twenty years ago, when the population of Barking was only half what it is to-day, it
was not uncommon to have over 100 cases of diphtheria during a year, whereas for
1948 there were only eight cases, with only one death. It is not too much to say that
for all practical purposes immunisation can abolish diphtheria.
On page 59 will be found diphtheria immunisation statistics in relation to the
child population.
Head Lice.
Although Mary was not immediately faced with the problem of her baby
going to school, she was already beginning to worry, as is the fashion of mothers,
particularly from the standpoint of her child becoming accidentally verminous.
I was able to assure Mary that there is not a lot of infestation from child to child,
anyhow not at school, and that, although I have no reliable statistics, my present
information is that most children become infested by catching the vermin from
an older person—I hesitate to say so, but who almost always is a woman.
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