[Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Hertfordshire County Council.

  • Hertfordshire (England). County Council. n 50062101.
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Hertfordshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    reasonable way in which an industrial training scheme for mental defectives could be made applicable to the whole County. It will be observed that the Mental Welfare Officers all refer with enthusiasm to the prospect of having Adult Training Centres as part of the new service. The Committee should be aware that the Report which they considered in 1955 on Adult Training Centres was concerned only with cases which could be expected to profit substantially from training. Despite the title of “ Senior Training Centre ”, the Adult Occupation Centre envisaged by the Mental Health Bill will be open to all mentally subnormal adults living in the community who are capable of attending and wish to do so. There will not be a requirement that those accepted for the Training Centre should show evidence of being capable of learning to do useful work. This, of course, enlarges the field of recruitment tremendously, and makes it possible to plan a series of these Centres of reasonable size and within reasonable distance of most of the potential users in the County. In these restless days, it is useful to look back and see what things were like fifty years ago. In the 1908 Report of the County Medical Officer, there is a record of the somewhat uphill progress in the effort to provide Isolation Hospitals at Barnet, Hemel Hempstead, and Hitchin. All three were declared redundant in 1948. There is a very topical passage in which the County Medical Officer notes that the estimated population was 291,847, but regrets the difficulty of making reliable estimates in view of the advent of certain new influences, e.g. motor- cars and omnibuses, tramcars to Barnet and Waltham Cross, and the proposed electric railway from Euston to Watford. The transfer of factories from London has led to the growth of Watford from 29,000 to 39,000, and the development of Letchworth (the first Garden City) to a population of 6,000 in some five years. In a plea for good nursing and medical care for infectious diseases, he instances the fact that the Watford Isolation Hospital treated 110 cases of diphtheria with a Death Rate of only 4-5 per cent. The 41 deaths from diphtheria in that year represent a much higher percentage for the County as a whole. Half the District Councils maintained some sort of accommodation for smallpox cases. The Smallpox Hospital at Ware was greatly improved by the provision of an ample water supply drawn from a deep well by “ pump and windmill The Report concludes with references to the work of a Committee set up to consider the working of the Midwives Act, 1902. This Act put the Midwife under an obligation (which still exists) to call a doctor in certain circumstances, but there was no provision to secure the doctor’s attendance. The Lady Inspector of Midwives reported that, in 1908, there were 230 calls for medical aid, and that a means of paying the doctor’s fee had been contrived in all but four cases. In previous years, I have paid tribute to the part played by members of my staff in the production of my Reports or in the services under discussion. My gratitude to them is undiminished, but a review of the Local Health Authority services would be incomplete if I failed to express my thanks to the voluntary workers who have done so much to help in a surprising variety of ways. With the local development of health services at divisional level, there is no longer anyone who can claim to know the full extent of our indebtedness to voluntary effort, and this Report is one of the few opportunities of saying “ thank you, on behalf of the Health Committee and of my staff, for what you do to help us in our work ”, I am, Ladies and Gentlemen, Your obedient servant, J. L. Dunlop, County Medical Officer.