Facts which prove the immediate necessity for the enactment of sanitary measures, to remove those causes which at present increase most fearfully the bills of mortality, and seriously affect the health of towns / by John Charles Hall.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Facts which prove the immediate necessity for the enactment of sanitary measures, to remove those causes which at present increase most fearfully the bills of mortality, and seriously affect the health of towns / by John Charles Hall. 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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    tration of the adage, what is every one's business is no one’s ; had proper officers of health been appointed this nuisance could not have been suffered so long to exist in the centre of the metropolis : our friend Dr. Elliotson, it is true, would not have received his fees, for “ continually seeing patients with ague from that part of London,” but the public would have been gainers. Facts piled on facts are daily recorded which prove, after all, that the question relating to the measures which are required to remove those causes which so fearfully diminish the duration of life ought not to be regarded as a mere matter of taxation. It is on the score of econ- omy alone that we would for a moment ask the reader, whatever his rank or condition in life, what is the yearly sum lost to the working classes of this country, and their families, by the loss of time, arising from incapacity for labor, when suffering from pre- ventible causes of sickness—what is the sum yearly added to the poor rates for the support of the wives and children of those poor men whilst suffering from diseases produced by causes that can be removed ?! how much is paid to preserve from starvation the widows and orphans of the fathers hurried to a premature grave, by diseases arising from causes over which man has control? after all, if the sanitary question is placed before the public, (and this shall be done by facts and figures ere we conclude) on the narrow ground of economy, it will be found the greatest national burdens we have to bear, arise from crowding together the poorer part of the population into houses altogether unfitted for the abodes of human beings; bad sewerage, and improper r<entilation. To go into all tbe details of the mass of misery and human suf- fering existing in the metropolis at this moment would so increase the size of this work, that the one object for which it has been written, the placing the evils of the present system before all classes, in as brief a space as possible, would be defeated, and yet, from the numerous reports and the mass of evidence on this sub- ject before us, it is difficult to know where to select the most use- ful for our purpose;—a few however must suffice. SEWERAGE OF THE METROPOLIS. Turning to page 55 of the report of the Commissioners, the state of the sewers in London is thus described. “ The sewerage of the metropolis, though it is a frequent boast to those who have not examined its operations and effects D 2