[Report 1936] / Medical Officer of Health and School Medical Officer of Health, Swindon Borough.

  • Swindon (Wiltshire, England). Borough Council.
Date:
1936
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1936] / Medical Officer of Health and School Medical Officer of Health, Swindon Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    To the Chairman and Members of the Health etc., Committee. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, 1936 will go down in public health history as the year of the new Midwives Act (1936) and the first part of the Codification of the Public Health Acts ; for the epidemic of typhoid on the South Coast, and, locally in Swindon, for the worst, and what should be the last, of a series of periodic epidemics if diphtheria. Although the death rate was the highest of any year but four since the borough came into existence, 1936 was in most respects a healthy year in Swindon and in spite of the first quarter’s toll of diphtheria, unusually free from dangerous infective sickness. The high death rate is mitigated by the fact that 55% of those who passed out had done over 65 years of earth service, and, apart from those who paid the exceptionally heavy toll of cancer, left us by comparatively peaceful means. Child mortality, which is the best single guide to the health of the community, was low for all ages except for the 5-10 year period which bore the brunt of the diphtheria epidemic. Maternal deaths at one give a maternal mortality as low as we can expect it to be and the absence of serious maternal morbidity tells us that our midwifery service repaid us for the years of toils and anxiety spent upon it. Our schoolchildren are well. Serious defects are lower than they have ever been and the year gave no new blindness, nor deafness, nor hopeless crippling in our children. All this is good, but everything is not as good as it might be, and the successes we have had, though with justice we may be pleased with and proud of them, tell us most clearly that they are not the best which can be obtained and that increased and not diminished effort should be the slogan under which to march to a state of health, energy and prosperity which at present we dimly visualize. All is not well. We owe that which we have achieved in promoting human health to the development of prevention— using that word to cover all means utilized to preserve health— but that specialized item v/hich is usually called preventive medicine, (though as I have said repeatedly, it is not medicine and not pre¬ vention) is the Cinderella of medicine, though it receives fatuous adulation from those who are determined it shall not curtail their perquisites. There is a legend that the Devil said that his best friends were the clergy who taught the fear of God instead of the love of Him. Which means that we are more fearful of hurt than trustful of benefit. So with alacrity we give millions in the cause of war which everybody hates, and with parsimony and grave misgiving begrudge a few pence to the promotion of Peace which we all