150 ADMINISTRATIVE SECTION 



great town in England, was for the co-ordination of effort 

 and the prevention of overlapping. There were no less 

 than sixteen central health societies in London alone, and 

 in the case of twenty out of twenty-eight municipalities 

 there was more than one voluntary health society at work. 

 The first thing to be done was to co-ordinate the work of 

 those various societies. But they wanted to do a great deal 

 more. They wanted to arrange their work under expert 

 guidance, and therefore they considered that all those 

 voluntary health societies should be working in the various 

 municipalities under the auspices and under the guidance 

 of the medical officer of health, and they also felt very 

 strongly indeed that the Public Health Authority should be 

 actively engaged in associated effort with the voluntary 

 agency. They would like to see in each of those great 

 towns joint committees formed, consisting of representa- 

 tives of the Public Health Authority and the Poor Relief 

 Authority, because there were numbers and numbers of 

 cases in which health work could not be done unless some 

 real financial assistance was given to the cases. Then they 

 would like to see the voluntary health societies assisted in 

 the following ways : They all wanted a place in which to 

 meet, and surely there could be no better place in which 

 they could meet than in the municipal buildings themselves. 

 Then they wanted a certain amount of financial assistance, 

 because the most admirable voluntary health workers were 

 not people who were able to give much financial assistance. 

 Then they wanted, as it seemed to him, to form the joint 

 committees to which he had referred. Briefly, what they 

 wanted to effect in regard to the promotion of voluntary 

 health work in this great metropolis was to get rid of 

 insularity and to promote co-ordinated effort between the 

 voluntary health agency and the officers. 



Dr. TEMPLEMAN (Dundee) said he wished to say just one 

 or two words on the same lines as the previous speaker. 

 He came from a city which, unfortunately, had the reputa- 

 tion of having a very high infant mortality. He was sorry 

 to say that Dundee had the highest infant mortality in 

 Scotland, and although they had been endeavouring for a 

 good many years past to reduce it, and had at wprk prac- 

 tically all the agencies which had been mentioned at the 

 Conference, and had, in addition, restaurants for feeding 

 the nursing and expectant mothers, they still found that 

 their infant mortality did not come down with that certainty 

 which they looked forward to and which they had hoped 

 would have followed the measures they had taken. That, 

 to his mind, was very largely due to the industrial condi- 



