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It would be a thousand pities if the first and most brilliant application of the method of preventive
inoculation, a method which has given rise, in due course, to immunisation against diphtheria,
typhoid, plague and other diseases, which has saved hundreds of thousands of lives and prevented
untold human misery, should be jettisoned for any procedure which has not received the most thorough
examination and most cautious experimental application. Vaccination prevents smallpox. Smallpox
is still worth preventing and no surer method of doing it has yet been devised than universal infant
vaccination and periodic re-vaccination. Nature may yet choose to illustrate tragically that vaccination
in infancy is no longer universal.
Staff Changes.—The department during the year lost the services of Miss Beckett, health
visitor, Mr. Davies, Vaccination Officer, and Mr. Drake, senior sanitary inspector, all of whom retired
on superannuation on May 31st, after long and distinguished service.
The filling of Mr. Davies's post gave rise to some internal re-organisation, Mr. Hurford, Chief
Clerk, being also appointed Vaccination Officer, and an additional junior clerk being appointed.
The opening of the new Maternity Home led to the appointment, in addition to the staff
transferred, of a Resident Medical Officer, Sister, resident porter, a cook, maids and cleaners. A
nurse for the Ultra Violet Light Department, an additional health visitor and an additional clerk
were appointed to meet clinic needs.
The Overcrowding Survey continued during the year, the following temporary staff being
appointed for varying periods: three temporary sanitary inspectors, six survey assistants, three
clerks and one shorthand-typist.
Preventive medicine can to-day reasonably claim to be a science but the application of any
science to human beings becomes an art. My third annual report on the health of Fulham is the
appropriate place to thank my colleagues in the Health Department, not only for their kindly reception
of my own ideas about the way things should be done, but also for their unobtrusive and plentiful
supplying of local knowledge. The resultant team work has, I think contributed materially to the
achievement of our object: the spread of knowledge about health and the fostering of conditions in
which health is possible.
To my colleagues, the heads of other Council departments, I am also indebted for very real
co-operation, as also to the constructive interest of members of the Council in general and of the
Chairmen and members of the public health, maternity and child welfare and housing committees
in particular.
I have the honour to be,
Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your obedient Servant,
J. A. SCOTT,
Medical Officer of Health.