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9
I know full well that the British Medical Association, centrally and
locally, would like to staff the Ante-Natal Centre and other Centres,
with general medical practitioners.
I have much sympathy with my colleagues in general medical
practice ; their sphere of activity tends to grow narrower. Had I
been a general practitioner, I would have raised this question, from
the practitioner's point of view, twenty years ago.
So far as Deptford is concerned, the Borough Council has
courteously informed the local branch of the B.M.A. that they are
satisfied with the present whole time Medical Officer arrangements.
The local branch of the B.M.A. have published their reply, and in
it some reference is made to the possibility of Public Health Committees
and their Medical Officers perhaps unconsciously desiring to
increase their own power and importance in mistake for disinterested
zeal for the Public Health.
It is a great pity that the whole time officer trend was not diagnosed
by the Association's members and officials years and years ago. It just
comes to this, that experts at the Ministry of Health and reasonably
competent M.O.H.'s, like myself, have enquired into such grave matters
as infant and maternal mortality. Enquiry has disclosed serious
mortality rates; disclosure has led to action, and so to improvement.
National and municipal interference has been necessary to organise
and direct: the Authorities have educated and trained officers, burning
with a desire to encompass mass improvements in Public Health.
Kindly, self-sacrificing and competent though he is, the average general
practitioner has not developed a communal interest in these problems;
he has not been trained to it to any appreciable extent as a student.
It is a pity that the British Medical Association did not find a fighter
in their ranks twenty years ago, one perhaps with "a natural and
perhaps unconscious desire to increase" the general practitioner's
power and importance.
The work of the Tuberculosis Department has moved serenely and
well throughout the year. As from April 1st, 1929, a small sum will
be available for a part-time Home Help where, say, a distressed
mother suffering from Tuberculosis, is struggling along doing her best
to bring up her children. Similarly, a little money has been ear-marked
for cases in which Dr. Donnelly or his colleagues find an extra bed to
be sine qua non.