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.

    690/896 (page 2)
    The present age is one of enquiry, we are all taking less on trust, we wish to know the reason why anything is done, all knowledge is making great strides, no knowledge has made such advances as the science of sanitation. This Society is its child. Twenty years ago the public were beginning to recognise the great law that public health means public wealth, and as the result the Public Health Act of 1865 became law. In this Act certain extended powers were given to the Board of Supervision, which was first constituted in 1845. Local authorities were defined, and there was set in operation a number of laws and regulations having very important bearings on the health of the community. During the last session of Parliament, Lord Advocate Balfour introduced an Act called the Burgh Police and Health Act for Scotland. The pressure of public business prevented this Act from becoming law. That Act will again be brought forward, and as members of the Health Society, it is your duty to take an interest in it, and to see that proper provisions are introduced which will make law those floating ideas which are the outcome of those advances which have been made in sanitary knowledge since the last Act was passed. Twenty years is a long time in this age of progress. These years have borne much fruit, which to a great extent is still ungathered. Take a deep interest in this question, and spend some of your political zeal in framing laws bearing on the preservation of your health. The answer will be made to me—some of you are thinking of it now—that we have in our town a Municipal and Police Act, in which many sanitary clauses have been introduced; that this Act was passed as recently as 1879, and that, as far as Edinburgh is concerned, we require no Public Health Act. You surely are interested in the welfare of Scotland as a whole, and are not so foolish as to look on yourselves as entirely separate from your neighbours. You cannot pass by like the Levite of old. Do not most of you feel the necessity of a yearly holiday ] You visit a health resort; do you always get health] Is it not notorious that you frequently contract diseases, the result of bad water, bad milk, bad drainage, and return to Edinburgh disgusted with your