London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972

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East Ham 1929

[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for East Ham]

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31
(b) Daily recording of temperature for short periods in observation
cases could be carried out more extensively.
(c) More visits could be made to domiciliary patients and to
new patients notified to us as tubercular, but who are too
ill to attend the Dispensary for examination.
(d) Finally, it is necessary that one nurse have some spare
time to supervise in consultation with the Tuberculosis
Officer, the administrative work of the clerks, especially
in so far as statistics are concerned.
Co-operation with the Dispensary on the part of General
Practitioners.
This has again been extremely satisfactory as indicated by
the increased number of consultations for the year shewn in Table
1, of 357 this year, compared with 262 last year. All doctors
are communicated with in connection with their cases and quite
frequently personal contact with the doctor is made with considerable
all-round advantage, and the aim of the Dispensary in
assisting the genera! practitioner in the diagnosis of his difficult
cases is being fully maintained.
Chest Clinic v. Tuberculosis Dispensary.
The opinion of Dr. Ellman is that " the sooner the unfortunate
title of ' The Tuberculosis Dispensary ' can be
replaced by the more appropriate one of, e.g., ' Chest Clinic,'
the brighter the prospects of the Anti-Tuberculosis Campaign will
become, the fuller will be the necessary co-operation of both the
General Practitioner and the patient, and even more important,
the earlier will suspected cases of pulmonary tuberculosis be
diagnosed.
" For the position of the General Practitioner is a difficult one.
The average patient dreads nothing more than the idea of having
to attend a Tuberculosis Dispensary as such, where he fears the
worst and believes himself to be a suspected consumptive. Not
infrequently, as General Practitioners in the Borough have told
me, the patient will resent the suggestion of visiting a Tuberculosis
Dispensary and will seek advice elsewhere, till finally after
very considerable delay and from sheer necessity he attends the
Dispensary with advanced phthisis, by this time probably having