Community and Family

Today, we have a serious crisis in our society: a breakdown of communal ties and disassociation, exploited by politicians to deepen our separation from each other. This has come about from a multitude of reasons. 

Perhaps one of the main reasons is the increased use of technology, as people become separated from each other and from nature and become increasingly connected to inanimate technologies such as television, smartphones, and social media. This breakdown in community has led to a sense of isolation, anxiety, stress and the ensuing illnesses which this brings, as our immune system is depressed and as we function on high alert.

A hundred years ago, two great doctors, Doctor Scott Williamson and Doctor Innes Pearce, were meeting a similar problem: the breakdown of society and community, and poor health. Before the NHS was born, they decided to run an experiment together to study the impact of the community on health. It became known as the Peckham Experiment because it involved a thousand families over a period of three decades or more and took place in Peckham, London.

The Peckham Experiment

From small beginnings, to the building of a community centre in Peckham (the Pioneer Health Centre), where locals were invited to join as whole families and use the facilities however they wished. Facilities included a gymnasium, swimming pool, children’s roller-skating facilities, a crèche, cafeteria, bar, and a medical centre. 

When enrolled, the whole family received a comprehensive health check and advice on any individual’s medical problems and whether they should consult other specialists or doctors. The decision and responsibility to follow through on the medical checks were entirely up to the individual; there was no pressure. Once in the club, they were free to use all the facilities however they chose, but they accepted that they were effectively guinea pigs being studied.

Helper observers monitored everyone’s activity, especially the children, and the whole family received annual full medical checkups. By every medical measure, the health of all the participants improved while they were at the clubhouse without any medical intervention by the doctors there.

What was happening was an ever-increasing feeling of community and belonging, which the doctors later claimed was the prime reason for the participants’ improved health. This was the first scientific investigation of how strong and important a feeling of community and family was to a person’s and society’s health.

Over the last century, since this experiment, for a variety of reasons, this perception of community and family continuity has diminished, giving rise to many health problems. Some of this is due to increased technology, social media, television, smartphones, and a lack of connection to each other, a breakdown in social cohesion, often utilised by political factions seeking popularity with the public.

At its heart, this is a lack of compassion, love and concern for ourselves and each other. When we see our fellow human beings as different and/or separate from ourselves, the breakdown of society begins. Added to this has been an increasing separation from nature as more of us grow up in concrete, inanimate cities, living in our separate little boxes. 

Medicine has followed this same path. The demise of the family physician and the rise of the clinical doctor, reliant on more and more technology and drugs, was foreseen by Dr Lord Horder over fifty years ago.

The task now in hand is to find ways of reversing this trend and restoring a healthy community and relationship with nature – a challenge for each and every one of us across the world!

Michael Lingard BSc (Econ) D.O.

TotalHealthMatters

References:

• Stallibrass, Alison (1989) “Being Me and Also Us: Lessons from the Peckham Experiment”
• Conford, Philip (2016) “Smashed by the National Health? A Closer Look at the Demise of the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham”. Medical History. 60 (2): 250–69. doi:10.1017/mdh.2016.6. PMC 4847404. PMID 26971599.
• Conford, Philip (2020). “Realising Health: The Peckham Experiment, Its Descendants, and the Spirit of Hygiea.” Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
• Duncan, D. F. (1985). “The Peckham experiment: a pioneering exploration of wellness”. Health Values. 9(5): 40–43. PMID 10300468.
• Hall, L. A. (2001). “The archives of the Pioneer Health Centre, Peckham, in the Wellcome Library”. Social History of Medicine. 14 (3): 525–538. doi:10.1093/shm/14.3.525. PMID 11811192.
• Lewis, J.; Brookes, B. (1983). “A reassessment of the work of the Peckham Health Centre, 1926-1951”. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly: Health and Society. 61 (2): 307–350. doi:10.2307/3349909. JSTOR 3349909. PMID 6348589.
• Pearse, I. H., and Crocker, L. H. (1943). “The Peckham Experiment.” London: Allen and Unwin