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PREVENTION OF BLINDNESS.
No action was taken under Section 66 of the Public
Health Act, 1935, for the prevention of blindness or the
treatment of persons suffering from any disease or injury
to the eyes.
OPHTHALMIA NEONATORUM.
Nine cases were notified during the year, seven of which
occurred in the Maternity Hospital owned by a neighbouring
authority and situated in this district. The vision was unimpaired
in eight of the cases and one case left the district.
TUBERCULOSIS.
Public Health (Prevention of Tuberculosis)
Regulations, 1925.
No action was taken under these regulations during the
year regarding tuberculous employees in the milk trade.
Public Health Act, 1925—Section 62.
No action was taken under this section during 1933.
Tables relating to Tuberculosis appear at the end of the
Report.
EUGENICS—or the Science of Good Living—has been
prominently before the public for some years, but is still
little understood and appreciated.
It implies, not only a duty to ourselves and neighbours,
but to posterity!
We are most careful about the breed of our horses and
dogs, and even of our poultry, but appear to be very little
concerned about the human race, which should have paramount
attention. There is, for instance, no concerted action
or attempt to eliminate definitely defective types. We prefer
to provide hospitals—general and mental, filling the latter,
at enormous expense, with hereditary disease, and the former
with the halt, the blind, the chronic invalid, and hosts of
people so damaged as to be unfit for any occupation and
only able to fill the ranks of the unemployable and be
dependent on others!
During the past few years I have noticed that even many
of our young people ask for trouble—especially the girls—
working all day in London offices, taking insufficient food,
and spending their nights in the ballroom, with the result
that they easily contract pulmonary tuberculosis (consumption)
after exhausting all their power of resistance.
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