Certain common diseases of childhood in relation to their social background: a problem in social medicine

Abstract

An attempt is made in this essay to correlate certain of the commoner diseases of childhood with their environmental and economic background. Ten cases are considered in all.Cases I - IV deal with certain aspects of Tuberculosis in children, cases V and VI discuss upper respiratory tract infections, VII arid VIII are devoted to Juvenile Rheumatism, IX deals with Gastro- Enteritis and X with Nutritional Anaemia. All the cases have ';een admitted to R.H.S.C. Edinburgh in the last four months.That such diseases really are a social problem is evident when one considers the Registrar-General's figures for the period 1930 -32 in England and Wales. For this survey the population was divided into five social classes dependent on the occupation of the father.Class I - higher ranks of business and professional life • II - retail trades, clerks, teachers etc., farmers • III, - skilled labour • IV - Neither artisan nor wholly unskilled, farm labourers • V - unskilled labour.Though not exactly coextensive with into me groupings, the association between class and income is nevertheless very high.