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The Health of Barking
RHEUMATISM
may complain of "growing pains" and if you are careful enough
to take their temperature, it is not very much raised, and yet
this seemingly trivial ailment is something from which the child never fully recovers,
for it is a drain on their health and vitality and may be the beginning of serious
heart disease and other troubles later in life.
I could not say that my conversation with John did help to decide this question
for himself and Mary, but I did feel convinced that for Mary to choose infantile
paralysis, because the occasional case could be so drastic, was not of necessity an
answer to the question—which is the disease we most anxiously wish could be
prevented ?
Extract of a letter to John regarding Infectious Diseases:
"When the other evening you asked me at a public meeting what was the
present position with regard to measles, I hesitated to answer you so fully as I
would like to have done because I did not want to alarm the public generally,
but speaking in my plain blunt way there were no less than 1,436 cases notified in
1948. What I am happy to be able to say is that out of this very large number of
cases there was only one death, which shows the epidemic, which I believe we must
call it, was a relatively mild one.
"You have asked me when I think we are going to get on top of the difficult
problem of reducing the incidence of measles, and in my usual forthright way I
must tell you I do not know. A few years ago we thought the answer was around
the corner, but after that we found that the problem was by no means so simple
as it appeared to be. This, of course, is in contrast to whooping cough, of which we
had 394 notified cases last year. Here, without being over-confident, we do think
the answer is around the corner, and although I would not like to say we shall be
able to banish whooping cough in the same way as we have been able to banish
diphtheria, I think we shall at least be able to keep it in check.
"Scarlet fever was not particularly prevalent during the year—there were only
137 cases notified and not one death occurred. The trouble with scarlet fever is
that the germs which cause it are very widespread indeed and I suppose that
everyone catches it at one time or another, but fortunately most of us only get it so
mildly that we do not know that we have had it!
"Pneumonia is still one of the problems left for us to solve because, although
there were only 60 cases notified to us, there were no less than 25 deaths from all
forms of pneumonia, i.e. from notifiable pneumonias and non-notifiable pneumonias.
"One bright spot is that fever following childbirth (puerperal pyrexia) was
at a very low ebb indeed—only 12 cases were notified. There can be no doubt
that the integration of the health services in Barking has led to very happy results.
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