A Healthy Nation
The report on public health in 1948 (included in the report of the Ministry of Health published last Friday) makes a happy finale to the work of Sir Wilson Jameson, who is retiring after distinguished service as Chief Medical Officer. For 1948 is notable not only as the year in which the National Health Service was inaugurated—and incidentally as the centenary pf the first Public Health Act—but as a year of what Sir Wilson Jameson himself calls " wonderful " vital statistics. In spite of nearly a decade of strain and restricted diet, the death-rate of 11.0 per thousand shows a 20 per cent. decline since 1938. Infant mortality had descended from fifty-three per thousand in 1938 to thirty-four; there was less influenza; diphtheria immunisation has led to an enormous decrease in death from that disease, and, though measles and whooping cough were prevalent, fatalities in both were the lowest ever recorded. There remain, of course, some dark spots. There were nearly two thousand notifications of poliomyelitis, whiCh is higher than in any year except 1947, and little is yet known of this obscure and apparently advancing illness; cancer deaths increased, though this may partly be due to the fact that there are more elderly people, and, while deaths from tuberculosis reached a new low record, more than nine thousand patients were still waiting for hospital accommodation. Mental illness is another vast problem ; there were 145,779 mentally disordered and 54,887 mentally defec- tive patients in England and Wales at the end-of 1948. Generally, however, the figures show that British health is very good indeed, and that vague complaints of a lower health level because of food restriction are completely without foundation.
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