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Treatment of Defects
Last year's report dealt with attempts to treat diseased conditions
found on medical inspection by the Poor Law Medical
Service—the result, after giving the system a thorough trial, was
that this service is not suited for the purpose and likely to cause
needless irritation to parents and to the Guardians and their
Officers. During the past year except for simple cases requiring
either 1000d, drug or home treatment, no persons have been
referred to the Relieving Officer The lines upon which
treatment has been provided has been a combination of service
rendered by the Local Authority and by means of Voluntary
Charity.
The provision of medical treatment is totally inadequate
for the needs of the district. The London, and the Accident
Hospital at Poplar cater for most of this work in Barking .
the return railway fare is 10d. by ordinary train, and 3d. before
7.30 a.m.
To meet some of these needs the Plaistow District Nursing
Society allowed two of their nurses to attend at the Old Town
Hall to dress wounds and sores ; they did a very valuable workunfortunately
the absence of medical direction necessitated ven
narrow limits to the cases they could deal with.
When the Education Authority commenced to undertake
medical supervision of school children and given powers to provide
medical treatment it was apparent that needs of the district
would not be met by simply providing for school children and
neglecting to provide for other persons as well—e.g. in a family
of five children, two under school age, if one of these two and a
school child suffered from a contagious skin or eye disease the
public would not be protected by curing the school child and
neglecting the other who would probably promptly re-infect it;
moreover many of the eye, ear, nose and throat conditions prevailing
in children under five, if not treated at once, results in an
incurable deformity by the time they go to school
It was therefore decided to provide an Out-Patients' Hospital
under Section 130 of the Public Health Act, 1875
the scope of this work being limited as a rule to cases not
requiring the internal administration of drugs, home visits by a
medical man, or in-patient treatment. These limitations were
introduced to keep the work within reasonable limits and not
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