The earliest detailed records of the British nation's health, which were made in 1838, enable interesting comparisons with present-day conditions to be drawn. One hundred years ago Great Britain was already a largely urbanised country with a third of its population living in towns. The general death-rate was then nearly double that of 1937, while from. tuberculosis alone it was over six times as great. For every 1,000,000 inhabitants 1,000. died from smallpox and 22 from cholera, whereas not a single person died from either of these diseases in 1937. The typhoid death rate, which formerly stood at 1228 per 1,000,000, has been reduced to 5. These vast improvements have been achieved through a steadily increasing medical knowledge, aided by the provision of clinics and other health services. The facts upon which such comparisons are based are now more easily available than was formerly the case. In 1919 the administration of the public health services was transferred from a number of subordinate or local author: s to a national authority, the Ministry of Health, which has ever since issued most comprehensive and excellent annual reports. These reports give full records and comparative statistics of health conditions and health services throughout the country. They are read by many members of the public who are not directly concerned with the public health services, but who are interested to see what is done with the vast sums expended on them. Last year this expenditure—totalled 147,000,000, but a perusal of the Ministry's|- report leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader that it was a sound investment from the point of view of national health. To take a longer view, it is a singular and significant fact that since 1920 young people in industrial cities have added nearly a stone to their weight and inch to their stature, british Canning The development of the canning industry, which has been rapid of recent years, has given Great Britain a sense ai satisfaction from two points of view. In the first place it has provided welcome support to the agricultural industry. Thousands of tons of produce which would otherwise have been difficult to sell at a reasonable profit have been marketed for canning purposes, while the consuming public has been assured of a plentiful supply of British fruits and vegetables all the year round. In the second place, the canning of so much sound food offer greater measure of security to the nation a whole, in time gf emergency, than could well be provided by any other means. Up-to-date statistics are difficult to obtain, but the rate of growth of the industry may be gathered from the fact that one canmaking plant, which was installed in a fruit and vegetable growing district in 1926, now turns out as many cans in one day as it formerly did in one year. One expert estimates that over 300,000,000 cans of fruit and vegetables were packed in Great Britain during 1937, in addition to about 100,000,000 cans of milk products of various kinds. Excluding milk products, British home-grown canned foods utilized last year about 60,000 tons of tin-plate, and absorbed the fruit and vegetable crops of a total area of about 75,000 acres.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.