London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Croydon 1924
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Croydon]
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164
Granted that a considerable margin of error must occur through the
paucity of data, as well as through the necessarily inaccurate recollection
of parents as to the feeding of the older children during infancy, a comparison
of the two groups of cases would seem to justify the conclusions
that:—
(a) The method of infant feeding in children now of school age and found
to have adenoids did not differ materially from that of other children, and
the data yield no evidence of any relation between adenoids and bottle-feeding
on the one hand, or prolonged breast feeding on the other.
(b) The data do not support the statement not infrequently made that
the use of a "comforter," or "dummy," in infancy favours the development
of adenoids. While probably both groups show an understatement on this
count, there is no reason to suppose that this source of error has affected
one group much more markedly than the other.
Relation of home conditions to incidence of adenoids.
No conclusion could be drawn from the particulars collected as to the
ventilation, lighting, cleanliness or dampness of the houses occupied by
children with adenoids ; no detailed statement need be made on these points.
A census was taken of the occupants of the homes of 156 children found
during the school survey to be suffering from adenoids in some degree, and
the results are compared in the following table with those found during the
course of house-to-house inspection of the poorer streets of the Borough,
under the Housing (Inspection of District) Regulations.
The data for the latter include all such systematic inspections carried out during the past fifteen months, during which period the particulars are known to have been collected on a uniform basis allowing of comparison.
| Number op Families or Persons Living in— | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 room. | 2 rooms. | 3 rooms. | 4 rooms. | 5 rooms. | Over 5 rooms. | |||||||
| Families. | Persons. | Families. | Persons. | Families. | Persons. | Families. | Persons. | Families. | Persons. | Families. | Persons. | |
| A—Houses occupied by 156 adenoids cases and their families | 3 | 15 | 9 | 44 | 14 | 74 | 55 | 293 | 58 | 406 | 17 | 102 |
| B—Houses visited for House-to-House Inspection | 359 | 791 | 407 | 1376 | 364 | 1513 | 860 | 3783 | 764 | 3649 | 124 | 636 |
| 11 | ||||||||||||
The housing inspections summarised in the lower portion of the table
have been concerned consistently with the poorer and more crowded streets
in the Borough, and are therefore definitely below the average housing
accommodation for the working classes mainly served by the public elementary
schools. The homes of the adenoid cases, however, dealt with in the
upper portion of the table are likely to be a fairly average sample of
working class or middle class dwelling, and are therefore, in general, of a