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32
establishing a tuberculosis department in connection therewith. In September the
Borough Council were informed by the hospital authorities that they had established
a department for the prevention of consumption, that a consulting officer and two
nurses had been specially appointed for the work, that the department could undertake
tuberculosis work for Shoreditch, and that the department would be under
the management of a committee upon which the Shoreditch Borough Council would
have due representation. The new buildings and the equipment of the department
were subsequently inspected by members of the Shoreditch Borough Council. The
premises provided and the arrangements made are of a most satisfactory character.
There are well equipped consulting rooms with dressing rooms attached, large
central waiting hall with electric light and modern heating, and the department
is linked up with observation beds in the hospital and with the special sub-departments
of the hospital, including X-ray, bacteriological, dental, throat and surgical.
The work of the dispensary is to be diagnostic, consultative, bacteriological, X-ray
and statistical, and otherwise on lines similar to those of tuberculosis dispensaries
elsewhere. For the consultative work of the dispensary, two of the physicians of
the hospital are to be elected annually in rotation.
On October 29th. the Borough Council passed a resolution approving of the
department provided by the hospital as a tuberculosis dispensary for the Borough,
subject to satisfactory arrangements being made whereby the officers appointed by
the dispensary shall be officers of the Borough Council under the supervision of
the Medical Officer of Health for the purposes which are set forth in Articles XI.
and XII. of the Public Health (Tuberculosis) Regulations, 1912. At the end of the
year negotiations were in progress between the Borough Council and the hospital
with a view to the settlement of a provisional scheme for a working arrangement.
Meanwhile, the tuberculosis department commenced operations at the end of October,
and up to the close of the year some 80 tuberculosis patients had been treated as
dispensary patients.
OPHTHALMIA NEONATORUM.
The cases certified numbered 17, as compared with some 32 for last year. The
notifications were at the rate of 4.8 per 1,000 births, as compared with 9.1 for 1911.
Ten of the cases occurred in the practices of medical men and 7 in those of
midwives. The cases were enquired into by the Health Visitor, and are referred
to in her report (Appendix). Three of them were removed to hospital for treatment.
Four other cases of inflammation of the eyes in infants came under notice
as occurring in the practices of midwives, but they apparently were not considered
as cases of ophthalmia neonatorum by the medical practitioners called in to
examine them.
The cases notified as ophthalmia neonatorum in London during the year
numbered 699, the rate being 6.2 per 1,000 births.