Beatrice Webb writes " This book is the outcome of various lectures to Welfare Supervisors given by me in the University of Birmingham and elsewhere. It is an attempt to do some little towards meeting the new conditions arising from the war, which have not only brought many hundreds of thousands of women and girls into factories, in addition to all who were there before, but which have led to the coming of the Welfare Supervisor with her great opportunities for help ... The root idea of the book is my strong conviction that a doctor's best work is to keep people well, to raise as far as possible the everyday level of health .."