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A plea often heard in the past, in mitigation of failure
to attend for laboratory appointments, was the difficulty of
access to Barking Hospital. With the inauguration of the No.
62 Bus Service along Upney Lane - bearing in mind, too,
that the Hospital adjoins Upney Station - this excuse can no
longer be tenable.
Following on these ante-natal - and post-natal
investigations of the mothers, the help of the pathology
department is frequently enlisted by doctors in charge of the
Infant WelfareClinics, e.g. a well-chosen laboratory test may
reveal the cause of a baby's failure to thrive. In later childhood
pupils suspected, at school medical inspection,to be
suffering from subacute rheumatism, anaemia or other blood
disorders etc. are also referred. In such cases positive
results enable the child to be directed, without delay, to the
appropriate hospital or specialist clinic, whereas negative
laboratory findings help to dispel the anxieties of parents
and doctor.
The pathology department also receives a large number
of swabs and other specimens submitted by the Area Medical
Officers in the course of their epidemiological investigations.
Apart from bacillary dysentery, sporadic cases (or small outbreaks
in families or other closely-linked communities) of
which are continually occurring, investigations have not
uncovered any epidemic of note during the year.
Laboratory specimens submitted from other clinics
(Minor Ailments Clinics, Skin Clinics etc.) add precision to
clinical diagnosis and provide guidance to treatment. Nowadays
the greater part of this work involves the identification
of micro-organisms causing particular infections in
individual patients and, following on this, the selection, by
precise tests, of the antibiotic or other antimicrobial dreg
likely to prove beneficial. As is well known the most
prevalent cause of septic infections at the present time is
the Staphylococcus aureus, an organism which, unhappily,
shows an astonishing facility in its defiance of antibiotics.
The accompanying table gives a summary of the effectiveness
of three out of the many antibiotics which were tested
against 281 strains of these organisms at the Barking
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