An Account of the Maintenance of the Public Health in New Zealand prior to 1920

Abstract

This work is obviously incomplete. It is impossible within these necessarily restricted limits to deal in any satisfactory manner what with the state of the public health or with the organisations by which it is supervised in the period that has elapsed since the first settlers arrived on these shores until the present day. The history of Public Health in New Zealand falls inte these natural groups:- (a) 1872 to 1920 (b) 1921 to the present day (c) Hospitals Administration - a trilogy which has not, to the writer's knowledge yet been attempted. The first period is a day of beginnings; and this work is therefore only the "Genesis"; it is only since 1920, when the Health Act at present in force was passed, that New Zealand has experienced its real "Exodus" from old-time sanitation and from that popular apathy - sometimes, regrettably, opposition - that for so long hindered the public health worker in most countries. Hospitals administration is a story in itself; the hospital arrived early; but not until 1885 was a Hospitals Act passed and an Inspector appointed. Subsequent Acts in 1909, based on experience gained locally, have given us what is regarded by many as the best system of hospitals administration to be found anywhere. We have, unfortunately, no room for that story here, covering as it does the administration of public hospitals under Hospital Boards (or, in certain isolated districts, Medical Associations), of private hospitals, of mental hospitals under a Department of State, and finally of the Institutions administered directly by the Department of Health. It is the writer's wish that the reader may see, even in this fragment of a remarkable story, some Justification for the foresight of those men who in the year 1900 established by Act of Parliament the first State Department of Health in the world. Is it necessary to add that the Prime Minister was the Rt. Hon. Richard John Seddon and the first Minister of Health the Hon. (later Sir) J. G. Ward?