The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-09-07 00:00:00

THE

INDIFFERENCE OF THE PUBLIC THE GREAT I
' HINDRANCE TO SANITARY REFORM.

(From Fraser's Magazine.)
The great difficulty with which the advocates of sanitary
reform have to contend, is the apathy of the people in all
that concerns the preservation of health and life. It has
never occurred to them to look upon health as property.
They forget that it is by it alone that they are enabled to
earn a livelihood ; that the strength of their bodies, the
skill of their hands, and even the operations of their
minds, are directly contingent upon the continuance of
their health ; that upon it depends their own subsistence,
and the support of wife and children ; that without it they
must bid adieu to comfort, to independence, to all hope of
•

word, in every conflict with of
of peace -

ard things, in the pursuits
as in the struggles of war, health is victory and

s of the people unconscious
.at truth, but those to_ whom a

disease defeat.
But not only is the great ma.

fiction of the value of health is most essential are the
:o feel it and to act upon it. In the tailors' work-
-ad in the printing-office, where men rot like sheep
-lies, poisoned by impure air ; among the fork-
:A, and in the noisome cellars of Liver-
.., will find this indifference at its height. The
4-.nts of these places are not ignorant of their dan-
'm has blunted their feelings. They know
we doomed to a sickly existence and an early
have not even

ger, but cust(
that tlu

chance of escape, and that with scarcely an
on they will die before their time ; but they are fa-
almost to a man, and, as far as this part of their
creed is concerned, might as well he Mahornetans as
Christians. The very men who would move heaven and
earth to maintain some petty usage of their trade, or to
resist the most unimportant innovation of their so-called
rights, will suffer themselves to be suffocated and poisoned
without a murmur, and. even oppose the most unreasona-
ble and vexatious obstazles to the humane attempts of
fn irrinrnvP their enndition. But the infa-

1 .
tuation of these men does not stop here; for, in exact
proportion as their occupations are fatal to health and life,
they are addicted to that destructive habit of intoxication,
aver the victims of

exerts so strange a tascm
ical and moral wretchedness

This reckless disregard of health and life, this wanton
waste of the poor man's only property, this strange apa-
thy in a matter so momentous, forms, as we have said, the
n the way of sanitary reform. The school-

sadly wanted here

must De put in requisition. Man must
tit his duty to his own body. The dictum of
mel Johnson, that " to preserve health is a moral and
," must be enforced in the Church. Men
_ .minded that long life, and, by inference, the
mnd health of which it is the consequence and the sign,

_ sous duty
I must 1

—wag the temporal blessings
promised in tic. Above all, the minister of religion
e, should bear always in wind, that every year snatched from
:,T unhealthy occupations or unwholesome habits and added
it to the term of human existence, is so much added to his
SS own opportunities of usefulness,—so much, under Provi-
s dente, to the sinner's time of trial and repentance, and the
• Christian's period of improvement. Hitherto the clergy
have not exerted themselves in this promising field of
Christian labour. Their thoughts have not been turned
g in that direction. Ttiey have looked upon disease too
1 much in the light of a punishment, and too little in that
".ssary and natural consequence of an infringement
jaws revealed in man's body, and in the element
by which it is supported. The pestilence bred and nuns'
in filth has been regarded as a providential provir

hold a prominent place
ripture.

of a nec
of God'

.nst a redundant population; arid the merciful Being
ho has declared that he " willeth not the death of a sin-
er," is supposed to have made express_ provision to en:

a work in which all their
They themselves are the

.st judges of their own opportunities and duties.
In this truly Christian work of rousing the people of
ngland to a sense of the value of health and life, the
embers of the medical profession may co-operate with,
•

In their home ministrations, and in
sphere of duty afforded by hospitals and dis-
,, they have golden opportunities of impressing
the minds of all classes, but especially of the lowest,
'- 'Pules for the preservation of health, of which
- neople are grossly ignorant, and the
• ilisrracefull•

even more effect
that larcE
pensari

nine-tenths of the

y carele

ater part of the iemaj

hat many members of that most unselfish pro-
iv embarked heart and soul in the cru-
li swell the lists of

- ovvi, in a noble spirit of forgetfulness,
doing everything in their power to dry up the foul
their own prosperity. How favourably does
3 jealous spirit of paro-

and the r

by a green briar, than thus to be

iv ERPOOL STANDARD.