Dawn and Sunset

Abstract

By the end of the war, there was an expectation of better social conditions for all in the country. Community health needed to be a major part of this perspective. Chapter 3 clearly portrayed the pre-war Medical Officer of Health as the head of a local department whose long-standing central function had been the prevention and control of communicable diseases and other environmental hazards. Other responsibilities had come and gone and more changes in the role would follow. In the post-war situation, some far-seeing holders of the office were beginning to view preventive medicine in a wider context and “social medicine” and “social and preventive medicine” were terms which were found alongside “public health,” the implication being that the behaviour of the individual within society had an important bearing on health. The term should really have been societal medicine—i.e. medicine of society (Richardson 1956), but that would have been too clumsy. It would, however, have prevented the confusion with socialised medicine!