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6
To the Chairman and Members of the
Orpington Urban District Council.
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Comparisons have the unfortunate reputation of being odious,
but this happens to be the twenty-fifth annual report of the Medical
Officer of Health since the Urban District was constituted in its
present form, and it therefore seems to be an opportunity to pause
a while and look back over the last quarter of a century, comparing
one or two of the problems of 1934 with those of to-day. In 1934
there were 31 deaths due to cancer in a population of 33,420, but
by 1958, the cancer deaths were 158 in a population of 73,640 and
of this latter number, 38 were due to cancer of the lung. Owing to
the fact that deaths from lung cancer were a comparative rarity in
1934, no separate figures for its mortality are available for that year,
but the fact that in 1958 the deaths from lung cancer outnumbered
the total deaths from all forms of this disease in 1934, is a point of
considerable significance.
Although its critics say that figures can be made to prove
anything, accumulated statistical evidence has shown a clear association
between tobacco smoking, especially in the form of cigarettes
and lung cancer, and it would appear that there is no other reasonable
interpretation of the statistics which have been produced.
Despite the publicity and consequent widespread knowledge of these
facts, public apathy continues and indeed the consumption of
tobacco is still on the increase. There are certainly very deep
psychological factors involved in the odd situation in which vast
numbers of our people are prepared to run the apparently severe
risk of smoking rather than abandon the habit. At one stage I
was of the opinion that if the youth of the country could be discouraged
from smoking, the problem would eventually solve itself,
but further thought has forced me to the conclusion that so long
as their elders smoke, so will our youth follow suit, for it is one
of the natural characteristics of adolescents that they want to appear
mature and therefore tend to copy their elders' habits.
Having given a very sombre warning in the previous paragraph,
I should now like to turn to a feature which shows a very satisfactory
alteration for the better over the years. In 1934 there were no less
than 46 cases of diphtheria with two deaths, but it is now nine years
since the last case occurred in Orpington—surely a great triumph
for preventive medicine in the form of immunisation. If on the
other hand this freedom from diphtheria is to be maintained, it is
essential that all possible children should continue to be immunised.
The subject of prevention leads almost instinctively to the
question of vaccination against acute anterior poliomyelitis which