View report page

75
than before because of a general raising of the standard of the fitness
of things possessed by the community which results in conditions not
being endured to-day which presumably before were tolerated without
complaint. Then there is the large volume of work to bring about the
repair of houses because so many landlords and their agents to-day undertake
this work of repair only on receipt of a communication from a
Sanitary Inspector. Legislation such as the Shops Acts and the more
recent Pets' Shops Act, impose additional duties on the staff of the
Public Health Department. Much more attention is being given to the
state of licensed premises or places of entertainment. Then, all over
the country in the last few years, authorities have given much time in
many different ways to the means by which a high standard of the
handling of food in all its phases from production to consumption, can
be achieved. This is largely an educative measure and is but an instance
of the ways in which the members of the Public Health Department
play their part in health propaganda.
A completely new duty arising from Section 47 of the National
Assistance Act which takes the staff of the Public Health Department
to the homes of some of the elderly or infirm, and brings this staff closely
into association with the Welfare and other officers of the County Council,
and with those members of the staff of the Hospital Boards who have to
decide on the admission to hospital of those who suffer from infirmity
or chronic illness. The growth in the volume of work of this sort far
outweighs the losses of some of those duties which were so important in
the last years of the last century.
When under the National Health Service Act local authorities lost
their general hospitals, their isolation hospitals and their maternity
homes, there were those who pointed to the additional powers given to
them under the new Act more especially under Section 28, and the wider
range of duties under Part III. There were some who seemed to see
the Medical Officer of Health as a kind of liaison officer, helping to oil
the wheels of administration of the services provided under the different
parts of the Act including the general practitioner service, the hospital
service, and those provided by the local health authorities. Whatever
might have been or even now might be the position of the Medical Officer
of Health of the local health authority (and it might well be that in those
County Boroughs which are not too large, the Medical Officer of Health
himseif might have an important part to play on these lines) there seems
to be no place at all for the Medical Officer of Health of the minor authority
whatever might be the size of that authority. And yet the 1925 memorandum
(which even yet has not been revised) says that the chief function
of the Medical Officer of Health is to safeguard the health of the area for
which he acts by such means as are at his disposal and to advise his
authority how knowledge of public health and preventive medicine
can be made available and utilised for the benefit of the community. "He
should endeavour to acquire an accurate knowledge of the influences,
social, environmental and industrial, which may operate prejudicially
to health in the area and of the agencies official and unofficial whose
help can be invoked in amelioration of such influences." But he can
advise only if he is informed. To put him in a really satisfactory position,