Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/380

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344
HAY—HEALTH MINISTRY

canoes, Kilauea and Mauna Loa, on the island of Hawaii, and the great extinct crater, Haleakala, on the island of Maui, with their surrounding regions. The healthy climate and beautiful scenery are attracting tourists in numbers beyond the capacity of steamships to bring them and are making the tourist business one of great importance. In 1920 the centenary of the arrival of the missionaries was celebrated on a grand scale, reviewing a century of what has been called a great history in miniature. The governors of Hawaii between 1907 and 1921 were: W. F. Frear, 1907-13; L. E. Pinkham, 1913-8; and C. J. McCarthy, 1918.

Authorities. Consult, in addition to the list in 13.93, Preliminary Catalogue of Hawaiiana, (the most complete bibliography, 1916); The Centennial Book 1820-1920, (by 16 authors, 1920) ; H. H. Gowen, The Napoleon of the Pacific (1919); O. H. and A. E. C. Gulick, The Pilgrims of Hawaii (1918); W. R. Castle, Jr., Hawaii Past and Pres- ent (1916); N. B. Emerson, Unwritten Literature of Hawaii (1909); C. W. Baldwin, Geography of the Hawaiian Islands (1908) ; W. A. Bryan, Natural History of Hawaii (with bibliography, 1915); W. T. Brigham, The Volcanoes of Kilauea and Maunaloa (1909) ; J. F. Rock, The Indigenous Trees of the Hawaiian Islands (1913); The Ornamental Trees of Hawaii (1917); D. S. Jordan and B. W. Ever- mann, The Aquatic Resources of the Hawaiian Islands (3 vols., 1905) ; A Survey of Education in Hawaii, made under the direction of the U.S. Commissioner of Education (1920) ; Reports of the U.S. Com- missioner of Labor on Hawaii (1901361116); Men of Hawaii, compiled by Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Ltd. (1917, revised edition in prep. 1921); miscellaneous publications of Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum of Polynesian Ethnology and Natural History. For cur- rent history and statistics, see particularly annual reports of the governor of Hawaii and Thrum's Hawaiian Annual. (W. F. F.)

HAY, IAN, pen name of JOHN HAY BEITH (1876- ), British novelist, was born at Rusholme, nr. Manchester, April 17 1876, and was educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh, and St. John's College, Cambridge. At the outbreak of the World War he joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, loth Service Batt., was mentioned in despatches and decorated with the M.C. He published amongst other novels Pip (1907) and A Man's Man (1909); but he is best known as the author of The First Hundred Thousand (1915), a humorous sketch of military life in the early days of recruiting, and its sequel The Last Million (1918). In 1917 he published Carrying On, and in 1919 his novel Happy Go Lucky (1913) was dramatized as Tilly of Bloomsbury and produced by Arthur Bourchier at the Apollo theatre, London. A Safety Match (1911) was also dramatized and produced by Arthur Bourchier at the Strand theatre in Jan. 1921.

HAYASHI, TADASU, COUNT (1850-1913), Japanese statesman (see 13.109). In the second Saionji Cabinet (1911-2) he held office ad interim as Foreign Minister during the absence of Visct. Uchida in Washington, and also held the portfolio of the Ministry of Communications. Owing to having contracted diabetes, from Dec. 1912 he lived in strict retirement at his villa at Hayama. In the following June he fractured his thigh as the result of being thrown out of a 'rikisha, and amputation was found necessary. He failed to rally completely from the operation and died on July 10 1913. He was buried in the Foreign Office corner of the Aoyama cemetery. In his death Japan lost an eminent diplomat, a genuine scholar and a man of strong opinions.

HAZLITT, WILLIAM CAREW (1834-1913), British bibliographer (see 13.120), died at Richmond, Sur., Sept. 8 1913.

HEALTH MINISTRY. The Ministry of Health in Great Britain was created by the Act of 1919. This had as its principal object the concentration of the main health services of the coun- try in a single department under a Minister of Health responsible to Parliament. The Act in the form in which it received the royal assent established a Minister of Health for England and Wales with a parliamentary under-secretary. Wales was given a Board of Health separately constituted but responsible directly to the minister. A Scottish Act was subsequently passed, setting up a Scottish Board of Health; this is entirely a separate organization and its chairman and parliamentary head is the Secretary for Scotland, who has a Scottish Under-Secretary for Health. The main Act also designated the Chief Secretary for Ireland as Minister for Health in Ireland. He is assisted by an Irish Public Health Council but its functions are purely advisory and its members are nearly all nominated directly by the Chief Secre-

tary. It is important therefore to note that the health administra- tions of England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland respectively, are quite independent, are under three distinct ministers, and that if any United Kingdom health legislation is desired it must be sanctioned by three distinct Government offices. Nurses' registration, indeed, was carried in 1920 in the passage of three identical Acts; and the Medical Research Committee (a United Kingdom body) had to be withdrawn completely from the sphere of the Health Ministries and placed under a committee of the Privy Council. In practice the Ministry of Health and the Scottish Board of Health perform almost identical functions and have proceeded on similar lines. Conditions in Ireland are so different that no comparison is possible.

The Ministry of Health came into being on July i 1919 and assumed from that date the whole of the powers and duties of the Local Government Board and of the English and Welsh insurance commissioners, save for their powers over the Medical Research Committee. The powers of the Privy Council relating to mid- wives were immediately vested in the new ministry. On Oct. I it took over, as provided by the Act, the powers of the Board of Education with respect to the health of mothers and young children, and of the Home Office in relation to infant life pro- tection under the Children Act. On Dec. i the ministry further assumed responsibility for the duties of the Board of Education regarding the medical inspection and treatment of children and young persons. Arrangements had however been made to enable certain of these latter duties to be carried out by the Board of Education on behalf of the Minister of Health.

In May 1920 the ministry took over from the Home Office the administration of the Anatomy Acts and of certain powers and duties in relation to lunacy and mental deficiency. The 1919 Act also prescribes that there shall be transferred to the Ministry of Health " all or any of the powers and duties of the Minister of Pensions with respect to the health of disabled officers and men after they have left the service," and the date was to be not later than three years after the termination of the World War (see PENSIONS MINISTRY). Many powers inherited from the Local Government Board, but inappropriate to the new body, have been transferred to other departments, ranging from the Board of Education to the Electricity Commissioners and the Ministry of Transport.

The activities of the new ministry fall into five main sub-divisions: (i) public health, (2) local adn.inistration and taxation, (3) housing and town-planning, (4) administration of the Poor Law and the Old Age Pensions Acts, (5) national health insurance.

It will be seen that these arise naturally by inheritance from the parent bodies. Indeed, Dr. Addison, the then President of the Local Government Board and Minister Designate of Health, was careful to point out when introducing the bill that no new rredical treatment was provided for any person by the bill, nor did it affect the func- tions of any local authority of any kind. There is, however, one in- teresting innovation in connexion with the actual machinery of the Act itself. Section iv. provides that consultative councils shall be established for the purpose of providing advice and assistance to the minister. They nave the power of making recommendations to the minister on their own initiative and their reports are to be pub- lished if possible. Already several of these councils have been set up (e.g. medical and allied subjects, insurance, and Welsh affairs), and a report by the first-named, outlining extensive changes in health organization, was published in 1920.

The organization and administration of public health in England on systematic and vigorous principles dates from the Royal Sanitary Commission of 1869. As a result of the commission's report the Local Government Board was set up in 1871. In 1872 the great Public Health Act was passed which for the first time organized all England into sanitary districts, imposed on every sanitary authority the obligation of appointing both a medical officer of health and an inspector of nuisances, and established the principle of a grant-in-aid towards their salaries. Sanitary law was further amended and codified by the Act of 1875 whose 343 sections still determine in many fields the health administration of the country. This vigorous health policy produced almost unhoped for results. The group of typhus, typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, measles and whooping-cough the " fevers caused in the decade 1861-70 713,000 deaths out of a population for England and Wales numbering roughly 22,000,000. In the years 1910-9 the population had risen to some 33,000,000, but the deaths from this group sank to 252,000, and of these measles and whooping-cough accounted for 169,000.

The position was reviewed by a Royal Commission from 1905-9