[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Greenwich Borough.

  • Greenwich (London, England). Metropolitan Borough.
Date:
[1951]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Greenwich Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    11 able service decided that they were henceforth Chest Physicians and so by implication, if not by intention, they associated Pulmonary Tuberculosis, by far the most serious of our social diseases, with other chest ailments which while individually important have not the same high priority in community medicine. Everyone in our profession who had the opportunity wanted to jump on what they thought to be the band-waggon. In this instance the hospital and consultant services provided attractions that the other branches could not emulate. All that remained apparently to the preventive and promotive health services were the dull dry bones of routine administrative procedure. We in the Public Health Service have been counter-attacking ever since but it seems to me that we have not even begun to argue our case with anything approaching unanimity, nor indeed do many seem to appreciate the change which must take place in regard to the function of the Medical Officer of Health, his relationship with his other medical colleagues and his ultimate position in the future scheme of things. It has been said that the aim of the Medical Officer of Health is to make himself unnecessary. This is nonsense. One might as well say it is the aim of every doctor to make himself unnecessary. Has Penicillin and Streptomycin and other startling advances in the realm of curative medicine done away with the need for the Physician? Surgery having conquered the abdomen is now exploring the recesses of the heart, the lung and the brain. As one problem is solved another becomes apparent and makes its challenge, and so with preventive medicine. The Infectious Diseases, with few exceptions, are no longer a serious menace but require only constant vigilance. The main known environmental problems are solved or at least the solution is apparent and is only conditional on labour forces and economics. Infant Welfare and the School Health Service, with the notable exception of the Dental Service, have almost reached the peak of their potentialities, and maternal care, although the organisation may leave something to be desired, is satisfactory. Having said that, have we exhausted the possibilities of pre ventive medicine? I do not think so. However, it is certain that the future study and the solution of newly recognised problems of social medicine may perhaps necessitate a complete change of organisation and of method in the present administration of the Public Health Services. Disease and illness will always be with us, this side of Shangri-la, and so long as Man is subject to the pressures of environment and to the vagaries of hereelity, so long will the Medical Officer of Health, or his equivalent, be required. But will he survive in his present form? If we are to make any measurable