A Chronology of State Medicine, Public Health, Welfare and Related ...

1952 Cont - 1953
1952 cont hospitals; public health; industrial medicine; social assistance; and of social
medicine.
"International Health Organizations", by NM Goodman, published. Second edition
1971.
University of Southampton founded.
Spastics Society founded.
1953 Births and Deaths Registration Act (1&2 Eliz.II, c.20) and the Registration Service Act
(c.37) consolidated previous legislation. See 1965 and 1969.
Education (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (1&2 Eliz.II, c.33) amended details in the
1944 act.
The Working Party on the Recruitment, Training and Qualifications of Sanitary
Inspectors (chairman, Sir John Maude, 1883-1963) recommended changing the title to
"public health inspector"; changes in the examination and the creation of an independent
Public Health Inspectors Education Board. The new examination was held for the first time in
1964. See 1956.
The Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, Cmd.8932, (chairman, Sir Ernest
Gowers, 1880-1966, public servant, author of "Plain Words: A Guide to the Use of English")
considered that the outstanding defect of the law of murder was that it provided a single
punishment for a crime widely varying in culpability. The Commission recommended that a
system of "jury discretion" should be introduced, which allowed the jury to take into account
extenuating circumstances in deciding whether the punishment should be imprisonment for
life or the death penalty. A majority of the Commission favoured raising the statutory age
below which no person may be sentenced to death from 18 to 21 years, and could see no
grounds on which women could be relieved of the liability to suffer the death penalty while it
still applied to men. See 1964.
An interim report of the Committee on Air Pollution, Cmd.9011, (chairman, Sir Hugh
Beaver, 1890-1967, engineer and industrialist) published. See 1954.
The King Edward's Hospital Fund for London opened a staff college for matrons. In
1968 this was amalgamated with the college for ward sisters (1949). See 1972.
The Central Health Services Council issued "The Reception and Welfare of Inpatients
in Hospitals" giving advice on the improvement of the care and comfort of patients. See
1961.
Hospital Inpatients Enquiry (HIPE) introduced. See 1957.
"General Practitioners' Records" by WPD Logan, published by the General Register
Office. See 1955.
Report on general practice by SJ Hadfield (assistant secretary to the British Medical
Association) published (British Medical Journal, 2, 683 et seq.) . A more objective and
statistically based study than that of Collings (1950). See 1954.
The Committee on Social and Preventive Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians
(London) reviewed progress since their report in 1943; found that there had been changes in
teaching these subjects in most of the provincial medical schools but little change had
occurred in the London schools. The amount of research in the subject differed substantially
between schools.
P Medawar (later Sir) developed the concept of immunological tolerance and so laid
the foundations of transplant surgery.
"The Structure of DNA", by JD Watson and FHC Crick, published, establishing the