Occupational health during the Second World War: hope deferred or hope abandoned?

health of the workforce during the Second World War, he wrote that, "it was a matter of surprise and relief that the general standard of Industrial Health has kept at such a high level"'.1 At the outbreak of war the health of the workforce had been expected to decline although experience in the First World War had shown that the health of the workforce had been improved by attention to such things as comfort and well-being through the provision of first aid, canteens and cloakrooms, and some form of occupational health service.2 J C Bridge, writing of industrial medicine between 1914 and 1918 noted that it was then realized for the first time that fatigue, under-nourishment and other conditions both within and outside work were as important causes of ill health as the toxicity of the materials which were handled. He continued by saying that the [first world] war period had ... a very great influence on industrial medicine. It showed quite emphatically that the health of the worker was a factor of great economic value and that a worker maintained in good health was of prime importance. We find, therefore, following the war a number of medical men appointed as whole or part-time Works Doctors.3 The lesson of the First World War may not have been as durable as Bridge had supposed, for, in 1919, the Lancet compared the situation of industrial medicine in Britain unfavourably with that in the United States. "The profession", wrote its leader writer, ".. . 2 Winter has produced some evidence that the mortality of some groups of workers, especially manual workers, actually improved during the First World War, brought about fundamentally by improvements in the state of nutrition, and in this, the provision of industrial canteens was significant. The health of the general population during the Second World War has been examined by Jones. Civilian health deteriorated in 1940 and 1941 but improved from 1942 onwards, although inequalities in the standards of health remained. There was a decrease in many causes of death, although tuberculosis was a notable exception; at least some of the improvement in health was due to improvements in nutrition. marked the anniversary of the appointment of the first four Government Inspectors of Factories under the provision of the Factory Act of 1833 and it included a review of the work of the inspectors during the period. Bridge himself joined …