On Public Health in Early Year of the Showa Era
-Public Health Administration, Tuberculosis Control and Prevention of Venereal Disease-
1976 Volume 42 Issue 2 Pages 72-86
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1976 Volume 42 Issue 2 Pages 72-86
In this papes, administrative orpanization for public health, tuberculosis control and prevention of venereal disease, which had been involved in the problems of public health in the early years of the Showa Era, were discribed. 1. In those days, public health administration had been centrlized to the Health Bureau and Social Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs, and they gave their instructions to the Public Health Section of the Prefectural Police Department. Countermeasures for the chronic infectious diseases were the most imoprtant problems at that time. 2. The mortality from tuberculosis in Japan was two or three times higher than that of Western countris, and there were poor and insufficient preventive facilites in all over the country. It was epock making in 1932 that the Health Guidance Clinic were established in every prefectures in order to prevent against tuberculosis by the subsides offered from NHK (Nihon Hoso Kyokai), but not by the national budget. 3. Licenced and unlicened prostitute, geisha, waitress and barmaid had been the major contagion source of venreal disease. Legal inspection system for the syphilis was forcibly applied only to the licenced prostitutes, but the others took the medical check only when they were arrested. Since 1928, when the original Venereal Disease Prevention Law enforced, all prostitures, streetwalkers, geishas, barmaids and waitresses have forcibly taken medical check for the venereal disease.
