[Report 1895] / Medical Officer of Health, Batley Borough.

  • Batley (England). Borough Council.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1895] / Medical Officer of Health, Batley Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/20 (page 13)
    Diseases and from Rheumatism. It will have been observed that our mortality from Consumption and Acute Rheumatism is very low considering the density of the population, the fact that large numbers of our people, work among dust, and that we have a damp clay subsoil, but when we take into consideration the fact that the surface of the Borough is of a very uneven character, thus affording efficient drainage, and that we have large open spaces, this exemption is easier understood. The large tracts of green fields within the boundaries of our Borough act as lungs for the denser central portion of the town, and the efficient drainage helps to carry off the superabundant moisture of the soil. In one thing we are lacking, although something has been done in that particular also. I refer to the Planting of Trees in our Streets. In Branch and Cemetery Roads the attempt already made has certainly not been in vain. Trees are of great service in a damp clay district, such as this, in sucking up the water from the earth by means of their roots, while the leaves convert the Carbonic Acid Gas exhaled by man and the lower animals into Oxygen Gas, an essential for the life of the animal creation. In addition, there is nothing so beautiful to a street as trees, and there is doubtless in this direction room for much to be done in our Borough. This is a com- paratively inexpensive method of increasing our Sanitary safety. The extensive planting of quickly growing and hardy trees such as Sycamores, Willows, Poplars and Limes would soon yield a handsome return in a clarified atmos- phere, and in giving an attractive appearance to our thoroughfares. In visiting, along the Sanitary Inspector, our Slaughter Houses, &c., I was struck by the large number of inhabited