Maternal mortality : report of meeting held at Friends' House. Euston Road on November 15, 1932
1932-11 1932 1930s 36 pages DR. ESTHER RICKARDS : Madam Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, in supporting this very important resolution, I want to draw the attention of the Conference to that very important disease, namely, rickets, which is dismissed upon page 98 of the Report in a very few lines. It...
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : Maternal Mortality Committee,
November 1932
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/620F3641-3B23-4856-A883-2D34872F48D4 http://hdl.handle.net/10796/6C3D1F42-DF1A-4DA8-ACE5-41A1FF9CBDA5 |
| Summary: | 1932-11
1932
1930s
36 pages
DR. ESTHER RICKARDS : Madam Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, in supporting this very important resolution, I want to draw the attention of the Conference to that very important disease, namely, rickets, which is dismissed upon page 98 of the Report in a very few lines. It says about rickets, "Rickets is a definite manifestation of defective hygiene and nutrition and is often associated with poverty. As already indicated, it has a direct relationship to Maternal Mortality, but its influence upon pregnancy is only one aspect of its disabling effects." Twice this afternoon the attention of the Conference has been drawn to the necessity of preparing the coming generation, the young women of to-day, the school girls, for their important duties in future life, but I want to take the attention of the Conference even further back than that, because rickets, which is one of the most important disabling diseases, as far as pregnancy is concerned, starts at a much earlier date than the school-girl years. If you really wish to tackle what is known as "the English disease," for our sins, you must begin with the care of the mother. It is pre-natal care, it is natal care, and it is care at the Infant Welfare Centre that really matters in trying to eliminate that disabling disease, and because some people do not see the bow-legged and the knock-kneed people of the last generation, they are blissfully imagining that rickets no longer exists. A careful survey of school children in London of recent years has shown that rickets among the entrant class of school children is still a very grave disease, and although its manifestations are not perhaps as dramatic as they were in bygone years, nevertheless they are as evident as they were in the past. Rickets affects the formation of the bone and the development of the muscle in a growing child between the age of six months and five years and may have an important result on the future of that child's adult life. Although perhaps the grosser abnormalities of the deformed pelvis have disappeared— the gross abnormalities of definite deformity and flattening of the pelvis — there still exists, and there is still very evident in our ante-natal centres — and I am sure outside our ante-natal centres — definite contraction of the pelvis and a definite disproportion which occurs in perhaps only the last months of pregnancy. Now I wish in the first place to call attention to the fact that this is preventable. Sheffield and Oxford have been mentioned this afternoon. Surely we are not going to suppose that rickets is as prevalent in Oxford as it is in Sheffield. It is a poverty disease. It is a deficiency disease which is associated in the first place with bad nutrition, nutrition of the wrong order, nutrition which is deficient of vitamins, and it is also associated with the housing conditions of the people. When people have to live in barrack-like dwellings into which the sun does not penetrate, then in those places do you find children suffering from rickets, unless other methods have been taken to furnish them (24)
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |