Notes on sanitary reform : the health of towns / by a Member of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science.

  • Brown, Samuel Sneade, 1809-
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes on sanitary reform : the health of towns / by a Member of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science. 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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    If) 111. THE HEALTH OF TOWNS. The General Board of Healtli, in the year 1854, reported the deaths from preventable diseases in England and Wales to ho upwards of 170,000, of which by far the larger proportion^ of those who survived their fifth year, perished at the adult period of their life, chiefly from various forms of fever; one efiect of this destruction of the heads of families, precisely at the time when they have the greatest number of young children to maintain, being to produce and keep up a state ot pauperism How to deal with this startling fact has become a question of the deepest importance to the country generally, and especially to the metropolis, and the difficulty is enhanced by the circum- stance that no assistance towards its solution can he expected from that class of the sufferers who are the first recipients ^d propagators of the maladies affecting the public heffith. The Board observes : “ In districts which aip the seats of the most “ devastating diseases, no e^ddence has yet arisen to warrant “ the presumption that the most successful examples wiU lead to “ the spontaneous adoption of combined and efficient measures “ of prevention. Experience has shown that it is faUacious to « conclude that all is well when there is no complaint. Among “ the population Imng in the lowest physical degradation, “ under circumstances which would he commonly deemed in- “ supportable, we have met with scarcely one instance of com- “ plahit originating with the sufferers themselves; they are « sunk too low to be conscious of their condition. Nothing but the compulsory action of some stnngent sanitary law, whenever society may awake to the f for its oivn security, ^viU be of avail to reach this, the lowest deep of all; a law so devised to extend to those who luofit by these terrible blots, rather than to the victims of them. Next come the workers for their daily bread, whose ailments