ABSTRACT
In that world elsewhere there was the world of the mentally sick, also the health problems associated with work and, above all, the vast and often unmet needs of the community. The community services, like the hospitals, had grown up unplanned from charitable endeavour and the Poor Law services, and by a chance of history the nursing services in the community had been placed under the aegis of the Medical Officer of Health who had been appointed to deal with sanitation and communal health problems (see Chapter 8). As the twentieth century advanced, with the teaching hospitals absorbed in the interesting and the acute, the importance of community health and preventive medicine seemed to be forgotten.
