I am making this post to bring a bit of perspective into the corona virus debate. As is often the case, I make no apology in saying that we should learn from our history to make sense of the present.
In 1908 whilst serving as Mayor of the City of Westminster my 1st cousin 3 times removed, Spalding born Robert Woolley Walden, a trained pharmacist presided the Annual Meeting of the Westminster Health Society during which the guest speaker Richard Burdon Haldane, Liberal MP for Livingstone (later Lord Haldane), whose sister Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane was a major campaigner for reform in healthcare stated that the best form of public health work was prevention.
He went on to say that he hoped that a forth coming report of the Poor Law Commission would get done on a large scale what Westminster City Council was already doing by implementing the principle of the "Elberfield system".
Under this system, voluntary help was given under expert guidance making systematic visits directed to definite cases, and compiling records invaluable to the Public Health Officer.
In all 11,000 cases had been visited and searched out at a comparatively small cost. Assistance had been given which made in many cases the difference between health and sickness, and well being and misery to the children of a great many families. He hoped that the example at Westminster would be widely followed.
At the beginning of the last century Robert Woolley Walden was a member of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. This body was described as being responsible for running England's first state hospitals in the book about its history by Gwendoline M Ayers published by the Wellcome Institute for Medicine in 1971.
The board came into being thanks to no small part played by Florence Nightingale who had campaigned for nursing reforms in the workhouse infirmaries calling for properly trained nurses.
The board operated between 1867 and 1930 and by 1900 had gained a reputation for its isolation hospitals set up to care for those suffering from infectious diseases such as smallpox, scarlet fever, diptheria, typhoid, whooping cough and measles. By the time that Robert Woolley Walden was appointed Chair of the Board in 1913 the board was responsible for providing some 10,000 beds in the Metropolitan area of London.
This was a time when there was no cure for these diseases, but the policy of isolation hospitals spoke for itself. Today's call for self isolation for those who may have corona virus is surely the modern day equivalent of that policy.
To bring the statistics of corona virus into proportion, a report of the Metropolitan Asylums Board's first meeting under Robert Woolley Walden's Chairmanship reported in The Times of 8th September 1913, in the preceding fortnight, the boards hospitals had admitted 852 patients, 30 had died, and 952 had been discharged.
A total of 3,307 patients were under treatment made up as follows:-
Scarlet Fever 2,135; Diptheria 762; Whooping Cough 225; Measles 134; Enteric Fever (Typhoid) 37; Puerperal sepsis 11; Other diseases 3.
There were 487 patients in the Turberculosis sanitoria; 2,265 children in childrens hospitals and homes and 7,758 patients in the asylums for the mentally ill.
When faced with infectious diseases, there were no magic bullets - just basic education about hygiene. With no cure yet for corona virus we must follow the same principles. It made all the difference then - it will make all the difference now.
Throughout this time were public gatherings banned? Not that I am aware of. However if the medical experts consider they should be then that is advice we should accept.
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