ABSTRACT
An examination of questions of ill-health usually requires some attention to the role of the health professionals. The account of the problems of women’s occupational ill-health earlier in this book indicated that medical knowledge and medical practitioners were involved. Outside of medicine, few other health practitioners were directly concerned with the issue. Sanitary inspectors were one exception and dentists were another in the case of the match-making industry. This involvement of medical professionals in questions of working conditions, industrial disease and the effects of industrial work on women’s health was mainly a result of their direct involvement with State initiatives in terms of investigation or enquiry and in the roles assigned to medical practitioners in relation to legislative regulation. This aspect is, therefore, a central concern of this chapter.
