Lectures on public health delivered in the lecture-hall of the Royal Dublin Society.

Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on public health delivered in the lecture-hall of the Royal Dublin Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the Board of Guardians of the union in which the town is situated.* If this course -were adopted in the case of towns with less than 5,000 inhabitants, the number of urban authorities would be reduced from 117 to about 44. If 10,000 were taken as the standard the number would be further reduced to 15, So much for the towns under Commissioners. IV.—Let us now take a glance at the state of afiairs in the corporate towns. There are ten of themt exclusive of the metropolis, containing together a population of more than 409,000 inhabitants. Here surely we might expect to find some tokens of a vigorous sanitary administration. Nothing of the sort. In four towns nothing at all appears to have been spent, and the total amount disbursed by the ten corporate autho- rities was only £2,390. So far it is plain that the authorities I have referred to have not availed themselves very largely of their powers. In Dublin, where there is certainly more sanitary activity than elsewhere in Ireland, the total amount expended by the Public Health Committee for 1871 was £2,050 ; nearly £1,000 less than was spent on the fire brigade.§ That the defects in the sanitary condition of this city are not altogether, or even in great measure due to the want of legal powers by the Corporation is, I think, very clear to anyone who will take the trouble of inquiring what powers that body abeady possesses. I am happy to be able to quote in support of this view, the opinion of our present medical Officer of Health, himself an eminent sanitarian, and in everyway qualified to pronounce on such a subject:— Dr. Mapother referring] 1 to one of the numerous local Acts to which I have before alluded, The Dublin Improvement Acts Amendment Act, 1864, observes that:— So ample are the provisions of this Act that it lias left scarcely anything to be desired in the way of sanitary legislation, and it * Boards of Guardians possess one great advantage as compared -mth. urban authorities. They include, as ex-officio members, owners of property, and men ot good social position, who are not dependent for their seats on the votes of the very persons whom they are sometimes obliged to prosecute for breaches of the sanitary ^^TViz., Drogheda, Kilkenny, Wexford, Clonmel, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, Londonderry, and Sligo. t Drogheda, Clonmel, Watcrford, and Londonderry. § The expense of the fire brigade for 1871 was £3,032 13«. 11A II Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, vol. iv., p. 260.