53 
MUNICIPALITY AND MEDICINE. 
By Councillor Dr. J . W. CLEGG. February Is/, 1916. 
Dr. Clegg gave the monastic system credit for the intro- 
duction of hospitals for isolation, and stated that the great 
hre in London after the Plague led to the widening of streets 
and the giving of greater space in houses. In the 18th Century 
they saw the humanising of British politics and the improve- 
ment of conditions in prisons through the influence of John 
Howard, and the great efforts of Chadwick in sanitary science. 
The first medical officer of health was not appointed until 
1847, and it was not until 1871 the attempt was made to 
consolidate most of the laws relating to health and sanita- 
tion when the present Local Government Board was formed. 
If this problem had been tackled from the beginning, as it 
ought to have been, they would have had a ministry of public 
health, but being an industrial nation, we set up a Board 
of Trade, and had not time to set up a real Board of Health. 
They had that condition remaining to-day. Part of the 
laws relating to the health of the people were controlled by 
the Local Government Board, another part by the Board 
of Education, and yet another part by the Home Office. 
The reports presented by medical officers led to the passing 
of the Public Health Act of 1875, which was practically the 
foundation of all our health measures. The result of this 
had been the very slow growth in teaching preventive medi- 
icine and a great many evils had been allowed to go on 
unchecked, and the consequence had become so serious that 
at the end of the last century — especially after the Boer 
War — the nation become greatly alarmed. It was then found 
that our lunacy was increasing, our workhouses were too 
full, our crippled people were too numerous, and our unfit 
were out of all proportion to what they ought to be. That 
led up to the formation of a commission to endeavour to 
rectify matters. He would not like to divorce public health 
work from the ordinary work carried on by the medical 
profession, as any attempt to do so would be disastrous. 
They were trying to stamp out consumption in this country, 
and the ideas of dealing with it were still undergoing great 
changes. They knew very definitely that it was not a disease 
passed on from father to child. They knew there was a 
predisposition for the organism to lodge in such children. 
