Volume 1

Health lectures for the people.

Date:
1883-1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    683/896 (page 217)
    the rural districts have suffered from their apathy. That is easily shewn by comparing the death rate in the rural districts with the death rate in the eight principal towns of Scotland during the decade 1869-78. These towns have vigorous and intelligent sanitary authorities; and many of them have extended sanitary powers under local acts. The death-rate in that period fell by twelve per cent, for the towns, but it rose by four per cent, for the country outside the towns. That is an emphatic commentary on a lax administration of the Public Health Act. In conclusion let me say a word on proposed changes in sanitary law and administration. This formed the subject of a memor- andum which in 1881 Lord Provost Ure of Glasgow sent to the other cities and large towns in Scotland. It was very much discussed in Glasgow in connection with the Police Bill for that City ; and some of its provisions have been inserted in the general Police Bill, which the Lord Advocate is to introduce next session of Parliament. I have no doubt you will all agree to the main points of that memorandum. First, if overcrowding is ever to be got rid of, there must be more stringent and definite regulations with reference to the construction of houses and the free space round about them, so as to secure a free circulation of air. Second, the want of hospitals has led to innumerable evils, and therefore every district must have an hospital, and also proper arrangements for .public washing and disinfection, including a reception house for healthy people, whose houses are being disinfected by the public authority. Third, the principle of the compulsory notifica- tion of disease, which has succeeded in Edinburgh, should be made universal. That is already proposed in Mr Hastings' Bill, which one Scottish member, Dr Farquharson, has promised to support. Fourth, you must have noticed that very often during the last few years sudden outbursts of enteric fever have been traced to the consumption of infected milk, and that the source of the contagion has generally been found in the unclean condition of some dairy-shop or farm. In Edinburgh our sanitary inspectors have power to examine such places, and the dairymen are bound to intimate to the medical officer the existence of infectious diseases on their premises, and the