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The Health of Barking
So John came to see me about it. He was a little surprised, and certainly relieved,
to find that during the year 1948 the total number of cases was three and for the
past ten years the total number of confirmed cases was ten.
It seemed to me just and proper that as John could come to me and ask such
a question, I should in turn ask another person a similar question, and this I did.
I asked a particularly well-informed person what disease she would wish was just
not there, if she had only one such wish, and, being a woman and, as is a woman's
prerogative, she did not answer the question I asked but said forthright "cancer
and tuberculosis."
CANCER
Now we could expect young people to mention cancer because it
would appear that people suffer from cancer at an earlier age than they
used to, and although many of these cases are diagnosed relatively
early in life on account of the improved technique, which would not have been so
diagnosed many years ago, I still think there is something to be said in support of the
opinion that cancer is becoming more common among younger people than it used to
be and, of course, it is a killing disease.
There were during the year 1948, 135 Barking people who died from cancer
and during the past ten years, 1,028 people have so died.
TUBERCULOSIS
Tuberculosis, of course, also accounts for a significant number of deaths, and
during the year 30 Barking people died from this disease. The
table below shows the number of cases which were added to
our Register during the year. To complete the picture, however, it must be stated
that the names of 262 people were removed from the Register during the year and
of these, no less than 100 were removed because they had left Barking.

Amongst children I should suppose that rheumatism caused an enormous
amount of disability. Rheumatism can appear to be quite trivial in children; they
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