View report page

Only those who have had to suffer as one has personally in one's own family, the ravages
of Measles, and when I say ravages I mean it in the fullest and most awful sense of the word,
can appreciate what it means now-a-days to be able to say with a fair degree of certainty that
their child can be rendered safe by an injection of Measles Serum.
The work I have done here has been so successful that I have recently been aked to
devise a scheme for the development of the Rover Scout Blood Donor Service for Measles
protection, starting in the County of Middlesex, but to extend ultimately to the whole country.
I cannot be too grateful for the co-operation of Mr. Finlayson, the Assistant Commissioner
for this area, who supported me through thick and thin. Neither can I express too highly my
gratitude to the Rovers who supplied the blood with such splendid results, and more particularly
to three of them, Mr. L. Coles, Mr. J. Bennett and Mr. P. King, who have been volunteers on
every occasion.
The establishment of a complete orthodontic scheme with some 2,000 cases treated is a
landmark in the progress of municipal dentistry and so far as I can ascertain our Orthodontic
Clinic is the first Municipal Orthodontic Clinic in the English speaking world, neither can I find
the history of any in those who do not speak our tongue.
Mr. Cohen, the Supervisory Dental Surgeon, has, with his dental skill and thoroughness,
made his invaluable contribution to the success of the scheme.
The success of this work has been one of the principle joys of one's work. The gratitude
of the mothers, speaking generally, is wonderful, and the difficulties of bringing the scheme to
fruition fade into significance beside the results achieved.
Again I want to emphasise that the beneficent effects of this work are not so much in the
realms of the physical improvement as in the obliteration of the psychological affliction which
spoils the patient's whole life, particularly in the case of a woman.
Another piece of work which one views with substantial satisfaction is the Cookery
Research, and the publication of the results in a Cookery Book made available by a grant
totalling £850 from the Carnegie Trust, supplemented by £150 from my own Council. The
year's research was extraordinarily interesting and the resulting Cookery Book which took so
much of one's time has gone far afield—to the Yukon, to Australia—and the Federal Government
of America gave it a three page review in their journal which goes to every Medical Officer of
Health in the United States. Herein one has been able to make a real contribution to the science
of nutrition for the humble worker of limited means.
With regard to the provision for the safety of our mothers, one has been able to provide a
service of the highest possible standard, largely through the sympathetic understanding, from
the Public Health point of view, of our first Ante-Natal Officer, Mr. A. J. Wrigley, now on the
Senior Staff at St. Thomas's, who really grasped the Public Health point of view. He left us
to be succeeded by his colleague—Mr. Bowes.
The closest liason with St. Thomas's, in cases of difficulty which wanted further investigation,
has been invaluable. One has been able to do very great service by retaining beds in
the Eastman Dental Clinic whereby our mothers can be taken in for a couple of nights and have
their wholesale extractions carried out in perfect comfort whilst the Council put a Home Help
in the house. This service has been immensely appreciated by a number of mothers.
It will be remembered that in my Annual Report for 1934 I recorded a case of a patient
at the Ante-Natal Qinic for whom I broadcast as she was found to have very early cancer,
which was subsequently operated on by the Ante-Natal Specialist at St. Thomas's. I have
seen this woman recently and she is in excellent health and working hard.
It is very gratifying to feel that one broke new ground which was possibly responsible
for saving her life, and she still remains, so far as 1 can ascertain, the only person who was
broadcast for to save her life instead of being broadcast for to go and watch some relation die.
With regard to Flat Rate Payments. I have no hesitation in saying that the success
which has attended our scheme for the provision of spectacles and also for the percentage of
cases dentally treated, is due to the introduction of the flat rate method of payment. When I
took office I found parents being charged large sums for spectacles with frames unnecessarily
expensive, which daunted, by reason of its magnitude, the parent who had been told that her
child wanted glasses. The substitution of a fiat rate payment, originally 4/-, raised to 4/6d.
for a rather better class of frame, and also a flat rate of charge for repairs, has done an enormous
amount to increase the number of children provided with glasses by reason of the fact that the
total liability was known. There is no terror of the unknown bill.
10