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4
To the Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors
of the Borough of Erith
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have the honour to submit my Annual Report for the
year 1955.
The widening of our conception of health in recent
years to include mental, as well as physical aspects imposes
special difficulties on anyone who attempts an objective
assessment of the health of a community. The Medical
Officer of Health of the Urban District Council of Erith in
the year 1900, on the other hand, could have suffered from
no such inhibitions faced, as he was, with a heavy load of
infectious disease, an infant mortality rate of 141.01 per
thousand live births, and a wide variety of environmental
problems which survive only as a faint echo in the present
day health administration of the Borough.
A comparison with the vital statistics for 1955 shows
the extent of the progress which has taken place in the
intervening years as a result of improvements in environmental
hygiene, in standards of living generally, in the techniques
of health education, and through the introduction of
a wide range of personal health services. Yet in spite of all
this, it would be to take a superficial view to say that the
present day health of the community can be regarded as
entirely satisfactory. Considerable emphasis is, nowadays,
being placed on mental health and there is a widespread
feeling that neurosis and anxiety states are on the increase.
It is, certainly, true that a very high proportion of hospital
beds in the country as a whole is devoted to the treatment
of mental disease. There are no statistics on which to base
a realistic assessment of the mental health of our community
and general impressions, even when they are the result of
careful enquiry, may not be altogether reliable. The mental
health of schoolchildren is nowadays receiving greater
attention than it did a decade ago but this may be the result,
not of an actual increase in maladjusment and behaviour
Problems, but of a reorientation of medical outlook and an
increase in the ascertainment of such children. In other
words, higher levels of health are now being sought than in
days gone by.
One significant development is the widespread and
growing use of the class of drugs known as the "chemical
tranquillizers" of which phenobarbitone is, perhaps, the
best known and which are used to reduce anxiety and tension
with a view to making life more tolerable in an age in which