The Sun.
London, England, 1865-08-02 00:00:00

Sanitary questions possess just now an especial
interest. The months of July and August gene-
rally put our precautions and regulations to a some-
what severe test, and this year the excessive heat
and the rumours of cholera in some parts of the
continent have reminded us that although much has
been done in the way of reform and improvement
much yet remains to do. As an encouragement to
our efforts it is well sometimes to pause and look
back on what we have already accomplished, and
when sanitary reformers are tempted to despair at
the uphill nature of their task, they will do well to
remember what was the condition of things a few
years ago. A writer in the current number of the
Quarterly* gives a very interesting summary of our
judicial and legislative proceedings in this important
matter since the first Report of the Registrar-
General in 1839. The Reports of the Poor-law
Board, about that period, and the first Report of
the Health of Towns Commissioners in 1844,
combined to draw attention to the state of
affairs, and when we recall some particulars
of the revelations then made we can only won-
der that the reform was not begun twenty
years before. The Nuisance Removal Act, for
instance, was almost a necessity in a great city like
London, though even under the improved legislation
there is a great deal to be done on this point. The
powers of entry and inspection of premises where a
nuisance is believed to exist are indeed very valuable,
and the right of magisterial interference with foul
ditches and drains, animals badly kept, and other
dangerous evils, has been productive of much good.
There still remains, however, much to be done with
respect to offensive trades and manufactures ; and
this, as the writer in the Quarterly remarks, is one
of the most difficult and delicate of the medical
officer's duties. It is true that science has come to
his aid on some occasions, and has appealed to the
manufacturer on more powerful grounds than
humanity, by showing him that the refuse he was
throwing away contained valuable elements for
fresh manufacturers. The coal tar and similar
substances have furnished, as we know, the beautiful
dyes which delight our fashionable belles ; but it is
not always that public duty and private profit go
so conveniently hand in hand. A great deal may be
done where the manufacturer is willing to take some
trouble, and perhaps be put to some inconvenience
or expense, as is shown by an instance cited in one
of Dr. BALLARD'S reports, in which he mentions a
varnish manufactory situated in a densely populated
part of King's-cross without the slightest inconve-
nience arising from it, while similar establishments
at Belle Isle annoyed the inhabitants a mile off.
The Public Health Act of 1848, creating the Cen-
tral Board of Health and appointing a medical officer,
was another valuable step, but the necessity of
active sanitary measures was to be strongly enforced
by a terrible warning. The year following came the
great outbreak of cholera, which in a few weeks
carried off from the metropolis alone 4,000 persons.
The rich could no longer remain selfishly indifferent
to the miseries of the poor ; those who lived in any
mansions surrounded by pleasure grounds might no
longer dare to disregard the sufferings of the dwellers
in close, pent-up, stifling alleys. Those who " eat
whatever is good" were forced to remember that
want brings terrible evils in its train, and those
surrounded with the comforts and luxuries of life were
bidden by a startling messenger to take heed that their
less fortunate brothers and sisters no longer lacked the
necessaries of pure air and wholesome water. As a
powerful and lamented preacher put it, " Every
time that a man in the higher classes perished it
was as if the poor neglected man had spoken from
the grave, or as if GOD himself had been heard to
speak through him. He seemed to say I can prove
to you now my relationship. You can receive evil
from me, if nothing else has ever passed between
us ; the same constitution, the same flesh and blood,
the same frame were once ours ; and if I can do it
in no other way, I can prove by infecting you that
lam your brother still." The Annual Register of
that year, looking back over the terrible history,
drew the same moral, " Wherever neglect, wher-
ever depression, or vice and poverty, pressed down
the Population, there the pestilence raged with its
retributive and warning arm. In the great cities,
the abodes of intermingled wealth and squalor, the
pestilence had its chief seats ; the foul drains, the
overcharged cesspools, the fetid waters, were the
fruitful reservoirs of death. From the filth y alleys and
crowded lodging-houses, the abOdes of want and vice,
the pestilence encircled the neighbouring mansions,
and struck down their well-conditioned tenants."
The terrible visitation, no doubt, gave a great
stimulus to investigation and reform, and the years
1852 and 1853 were marked by many measures of
great practical utility. In 1851 the Common
Lodging Houses were brought under registration
and Control, and the Act regarding them was
extended and improved two years later. The power
given to the local authorities to limit the number of
lodgers in each house was a check to the excessive
crowding so productive of typhus, and the provision

* " Sanitary Reform in the Metropolis."—Quarterly Re-
tiro, No. 235,