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ANNUAL REPORT
of the
MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Borough of Bexley.
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report for the
year, 1957.
As in previous years, in attempting to assess the health
of the Borough it is necessary to consider the vital statistics
for the area. The infant mortality rate of 1957 was 22.9
per 1,000 live births, compared with 24.6 in 1956 and a rate
for England and Wales of 23. For the fourth year in
succession no mother died as a result of childbirth and for
the eighth year there has not been a case of diphtheria in the
Borough. The standardized birth rate remains practically
stationary at 13.9 per 1,000 of the population compared with
a rate of 16.1 per 1,000 for England and Wales while the
standardized death rate at 11.3 per 1,000 is almost the same
as that for the country as a whole (11.5 per 1,000).
There is nothing in these figures to warrant either
concern or undue complacency. When one observes the
great changes wrought in our civilization by the industrial,
social, educational and scientific developments of the past
50 years and their profound influence on our whole way of
life, one cannot help feeling that the yardsticks used in the
past to measure the health of a community need to be
interpreted with great caution. Designed as they originally
were for conditions of widespread poverty and disease and
the absence of medical care they served, in bygone years,
not only as a measure of environmental hazards but, also,
as a spur to their amelioration. Nowadays, however, having
overcome the gross hazards of environment, we can turn
our attention to the more insidious and subtle ones which
remain, as well as to the new hazards which are constantly
arising as a result of the application of scientific developments
as, for example in the field of electronics and nuclear
physics.
A good example of the subjection of present-day vital
statistics to the high power of the microscope is afforded by
the study of infant mortality where the emphasis has shifted
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