Islanders Health during the Occupation - Part 4

By way of something off the beaten track, here's final part of the report on the health of the Islanders during the occupation, published in 1945, after the war had ended.

A note on drugs mentioned: Sulfonamide drugs were the first antibacterials to be used systemically, and paved the way for the antibiotic revolution in medicine. As the first and only effective antibiotic available in the years before penicillin, sulfa drugs continued to thrive through the early years of World War II.

However, the sulphonamides were soon surpassed by penicillin, which had fewer side-effects and could treat syphilis and sulphonamide-resistant infections. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, the sulphonamides drugs were arguably more important in revolutionising medicine than penicillin, as they achieved the first real success in the war against bacteria.

MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH: ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1945. 

OCCUPATION INCIDENTS.

The Occupation threw much unusual work on the Department and gave rise to many and varied incidents.

The sanitary side of the German Army, at any rate as far as Jersey was concerned, was very inefficient indeed. It was quite common to get complaints of a smell from the neighbour of a house occupied by the Germans. On investigation, we would find that there was a septic tank and soak away which had been constructed to deal with say six people, and the Germans had installed thirty of their men. In a short time the ground was flooded with sewage.

I have seen a garden a foot deep in it, and yet the German occupants had taken no notice! We reported to the German Authorities and sent our machines to clean up the mess in the interest of our own community.

Another odd act of insanitary behaviour was the construction of a concrete privy at the Pavilion within a few feet of an inspection chamber where a perfectly good drain connection could be made. Here again our protest secured its removal and the construction of more sanitary arrangements.

On another occasion, the water supply of a battery overlooking St. Ouen’s was sent to the Laboratory for bacteriological analysis. It gave results reminiscent of sewage. The Germans were very puzzled and asked us to investigate.

We found that the battery was pumping water from a stream, and less than a mile upstream, the O.T. had built it Privy over it.

The complete lack of sanitary supervision of small parties of their soldiers in commandeered houses or in batteries was extraordinary and to me quite unexpected after my experience of the stringent precautions taken by our own forces in the first world catastrophe.

The camps they built for their slave workers had the most primitive of sanitary arrangements, which gave them no end of trouble.

One could go on recording things of this type for a long time but it would be monotonous. When one considers the reputation of the Germans for science and cleanliness, it is all the more remarkable that plain common or garden sanitary sense should be lacking.

DRUGS

At the beginning of the Occupation we were allowed, in fact, encouraged, to buy drugs from Germany. German firms even sent us advertising letters. But gradually it became more and more difficult to get such supplies, and shortly afar the introduction of a quarterly ration from France in January 1942, all purchases front Germany were prohibited. A small illegal trickle conduced however.

One German doctor, who found his pay too small, supplemented it by bringing a suitcase full of valuable and expensive drugs back with him each time he returned from leave. These he sold to me for the use of the Hospital.

The transaction was not strictly legal, but the drugs were valuable, so ways and means were found.

Early in the Occupation, the pharmacists got together and formed the " Chemists' Pool ". They arranged for Madame Labesse to go to France to make the necessary contacts with French wholesale houses for the supply of drugs. These contacts stood us in good stead throughout the five years of the Occupation. All orders for drugs had to be approved by the Imports and Exports Advisory Board, of which I was a member ; they then went to the Department of Essential Commodities, and through them to our buyer in France.

There was some delay, but the goods did arrive in not unreasonable quantities considering the many difficulties.

The quarterly- ration was bought by the (Department and then re-sold to the " Pool ". This, and indeed many other of our supplies came from Jean Langlois of Rennes. All drugs and supplies not bought by the Hospital for its own use were sent to Messrs. Boots the Chemists, who acted as distributing centre for the " Pool ".

It was not easy for the pharmacists, each used to running his business in his own way, to settle down to this sort of combined ordering, but the scheme worked as well as could be expected, thanks to the tact of Messrs. P. Le Quesne, Gould, and Roberts. The brunt of the work fell on Mr. Gould of Boots', to whom we owe much for really unselfish service

Mr. J. S. Price superintended the purchase and distribution of dental supplies with great skill and acumen.

It was very difficult to estimate the needs of the Island as there were no reliable figures to go on. For instance, in 1940, we bought large quantities of insulin, sufficient according to estimates based on figures supplied by the General Hospital and the pharmacists, to have lasted three years. Yet by the spring of 1941 there was a serious shortage, which lasted until 1943 when adequate supplies began to arrive.

This was in part due to panic buying by a few diabetics, but was largely a plain miscalculation. Supplies from the Red Cross helped us to some extent during the period of shortage ; these gifts, though very valuable, were never on a very big scale as regards insulin.

The sulphonamides were at times in short supply, but on the whole never went below the point of threatening to become serious. A very large supply which arrived from the French Red Cross just before D-Day kept us well supplied until our release.

Sodium bicarbonate became sufficiently short in supply to become a very valuable article of barter in the black market.

We received supplies of various drugs, medicaments, and dressings, from the Red Cross Organisations on ten occasions between 1941 and 1944.before D-Day. Sometimes the help was only a small packet of insulin, at others, as in October and November 1942, a really large supply of very useful drugs.

All supplies from France ceased soon after D=Day and although we always kept six months supply of anaesthetics in hand, we were very short just before the Vega arrived, in spite of the strictest economy. On the 31st December 1944, the day the S.S. Vera arrived, we had only 20 lbs of ether left in the Island.

After that, large and varied supplies of all sorts began to arrive, and the drug situation improved steadily until V-E Day. When Red Cross drugs arrived in excess of the requirements of the Hospital, they were sold to the Chemists' Pool, and the money received from their sale paid into the Red Cross.

During the whole period we kept in touch with Guernsey. At times we were able to help her over drug and other difficulties and at times she helped us. A completely amicable arrangement was kept up with Dr. A. N. Symons and Dr. R. W. Revell, by which we kept each other informed of our Island stocks and needs.