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These demonstrate the rise coinciding with the war, and the great
increase in those attending for diagnosis and classed as nonvenereal.
Penicillin appears to have established itself as a most
potent and effective substance for the rapid cure of gonorrhoea
and probably also of syphilis.
Food Poisoning.
No large-scale outbreaks were reported. During the Autumn
attention was drawn to cases of sickness and diarrhœa in some of
the Corporation's schools. These were carefully investigated
but were found to be the type classified by the Ministry of
Health as epidemic nausea and vomiting.
ENVIRONMENTAL HYGIENE.
The work carried out by the Sanitary Inspectors is fully
covered by the report of the Chief Sanitary Inspector, but I
would mention three aspects of the housing problem. Firstly,
appeals for re-housing on the grounds of danger to health. In
modern communities with pure water supplies and water carriage
sewage disposal systems, it is most difficult, except for tuberculosis,
to produce factual evidence of specific diseases directly
due to bad housing. Where overcrowding affecting young
children is concerned, there are grounds for asserting that the
increased incidence of certain illnesses is directly due to such
housing conditions. Fven here, the evidence is derived mainly
from conditions in tenement buildings and not from areas with
the smaller properties of the type found in Croydon. In any case,
if it is contended that housing conditions today are particularly
bad, it will be remembered that the infant mortality figures are
the best ever recorded. The potent force in the demand for more
houses is the wish of most married couples to have and develop
their own family unit in their own home. This is commendable
and understandable, but it is usually impossible to estimate in
terms of illnesses the effect of frustration and delay in re-housing
on the physical and mental well-being of a family unit. The
daily appeals therefore for my support for housing applications
are all investigated sympathetically, but it is seldom that any can
receive effective support when assessed strictly according to the
established facts of environmental hygiene.
The second difficulty relates to sub-standard houses, of
borderline character, for rendering fit at reasonable cost. To
advise closure or demolition is to lose a housing unit. To temporise
and patch up is to consolidate slum property and make
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