Review of the progress of sanitation in India.

  • Moore, William James, 1828-1896.
Date:
[1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Review of the progress of sanitation in India. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    7 L/ */ / REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF SANITATION IN / INDIA^ The following sketch is intended to represent a general view of the progress of -sanitation in India during the decennial period ending with 18G9. Before the commencement of the ten years noted, or previous to the termination of the mutinies, sanitation, as now practised in this country, can scarcely be said to have been initiated. But following on the transfer of British India to the Crown, and the consequent more direct attention of the British public to its Indian possessions, the sanitary movement then in progress in England was by various earnest reformers urgently demanded for India. For some years previously, thanks to Wakley of the Laucat, Lee of the Medical Times, to Rose Cormack of the Bvitish Association Medical Jouvnal, to the Sanitary Revieiv, to Ranald Martin, to Simon, Sutherland, Milroy and others, the necessity of sanitation, in the broadest or “State” sense of the term, had been pressed upon the public and upon those set in authority. The annual reports of the recently formed Medical Department of the Privy Council, with Simon at its head, had made a large proportion of the reading and discerning public understand, that the extermi- nation of scurvy, dysentery and intermittent fever in London, in Edinburgh, and in Britain generally, had been contemporaneous with drainage, cultivation, the supply of better food, and the adoption of more complete sanitation in other matters, such as cleanliness and attention to water supply and conservancy. Typhoid, or as now often called intestinal or pythogenic fever, for instance, had become associated even in the public mind with accumulations of dirt and filth. Similarly, typhus fever was recognized as a result of overcrowding. Cholera, under the ever memorable investigations of Snow, was first mentioned as disseminated through the medium of water. Various trades, proved to be destructive to human life, had been made the subject of legislation, and the followers of them protected, as much as possible, from the injurious consequences of their employ- ment. And passing from civil to militaiy matters, we find that during the time which elapsed between the middle of the Crimean campaign and the transfer of India to the Crown, the bealth-rate of the soldier at homo had been ^ V..W V.. - X.. . w• « - — raised from that of tlie baker and compositor to the standanl