[Report 1916] / Medical Officer of Health, County Council of the Palatine of Chester / Cheshire County Council.

  • Cheshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1916] / Medical Officer of Health, County Council of the Palatine of Chester / Cheshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/152 (page 5)
    INTRODUCTION. To the Chairman and Members of the Public Health and Housing Committee of the Cheshire County Council. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I present for your consideration my Report on the health of the Administrative County for the year 1916. The lateness of of its appearance is due to depletion of staff and increase of work. It is with pleasure that I record a continued decline (though only a small one) in the general death-rate, a pronounced fall in infantile and zymotic mortality, a maintenance in the steady diminution of deaths from all forms of tuberculosis and an almost entire absence of the more dangerous infectious diseases in epidemic form with the exception of diphtheria, which last-named disease re-appeared in zones in which it is now apparently acquiring an endemic character. The progress of much sanitary work and in particular of housing schemes has been held back. But other health agenda have sprung up, not the least of which is the scheme connected with maternity and child welfare. So far as one can foresee this is destined to have an immense influence on the common weal and, blended and co-ordinated with other agencies, assumes at once a national importance. I have discussed the question of cancer somewhat fully once again, for one cannot view the tightening of its deadly clutch on life with anything but the gravest apprehension. The fact that last year again malignant disease caused more deaths than all the forms of tuberculosis put together is sufficient surely to indicate the tremendous stakes at issue.