Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1883-08-11

most significant, for it speaks of decided
early improvement in the physical condition
of the people. Wenow know that fully fifty
per cent. of all the diseases from which we
suffer are of the kind known as PREVENT
BILE. If they continue to afflict us, there.
fore, it is our own fault or the fault of our
neighbor, for whose neglect we are COM
PEELED to suffer. And it is precisely be.
cause our neighbor is negleotful that SAM
tary measures of force, to which the law
must lend its strong arm, are necessary.
The radical sanitarian will tell US that the
guarantee of the charter of our liberties,
for the enjoyment of life and liberty and
the pursuit of happiness, is mockery un-
less the laws of the country protect us in
that special pursuit without which liberty
ia of small value and happiness an impos-
sibility-the pursuit OF health. There will
be expressed no doubt by the well.read
lawyer of the right and power of commu-
mites which have. by legislation. been
given the control of local police matters,
to compel every msn 80 keep his premises
clearly, not because the community simply
assumes the right to prevent him from en-
joying what he may claim to be his inherent
personal privilege to live in filth, but be-
cause it has higher regard for the right
of his neighbor to be projected from the
results certain to flow from the ex,
ercise of the privilege TO be unclean.
In short, by sanitary law, the ssnisarian
tells US, the conflict between purity and
filth must always be decided in favor of
the former, and from chat Judgment there
must be no appeal. There is, seriously, no
possibility of sustaining any opposition to
the principle of interference which invests
the health authorities with power to invade
the household and enforce upon it certain
regulations regarding the disposal of sew
age, the construction and care of drains,
and the turning of noxious gases from the
cesspool and water closet into so high an
upper air that the atmosphere of the neigh.
borhood shall not be contaminated. The
Courts of California, from the lowest to
the highest appellate tribunal, have been
unit on the right Of municipalities and
town organizations to exercise this
power to almost an unlimited ex-
tent. It is the one thing In a
republic which bears the semblance of
despotic forms. But there is no good citi
zen now who makes bold to deny the wis.
dom and necessity of entrusting to local
boards such arbitrary and sweeping powers
as they possess. Such power must reside
somewhere or the community be enslaved
by the unclean. In a well known case
before the Supreme Court of this State,
and which went up from this city, Justice
Sanderson delivered an opinion in which
this exercise of police regulative powers by
municipalities was deliberately and clearly
treated by that learned jurist, and we
have no knowledge of the doctrines he
there announced having ever been doubted
or assaulted. He there declared that con-
situations do not put life aud liberty en-
tirely beyond the reach of government, if,
from misconduct, tie general welfare of
the community demands its sacrifice or
restraint; nor do they allow everyone 10
acquire, possess and enjoy property after
his own unregulated manner, and accord
ing to his uncontrolled will, but in such
manner, and by such means as the general
welfare OF the community may require him
to observe. Referring to measures enacted
in the light of this principle, the Judge
said that not the least important of these
laws are those designated to promote the
public health by creating boards Of health
with extraordinary powers over persons
and property; by establishing quarantine
and taking other summary measures to
prevent the spread of contagious diseases.
In the light of this Interpretation of the
law, end the police powers Of municipali
ties, there should be no hesitancy in max
ing foul places clean-nOr yet in making
the burden of that cleansing rest upon him
who brings about the necessity. It is, in
the administration OF these lave, to be
borne in mind that partial sanitation does
not, Of necessity, bring partial effects that
are beneficial. On the contrary, partial
sanitation is very likely to yield no pre-
ventive benefits whatever. It is only
through thorough AMI exhaustive measures
and their rigid and unsparing enforcement
that good results can be achieved. This
may be the better appreciated when the
statement of an authority ia quoted where,
speaking of contagious diseases aud their
spread, he remarked that he had known
the excreta from a single patient placed
in pit which was open to the air without
proper ventilation to prevent the lower
atmosphere from being contaminated, to
spread the disease throughout an entire
city, notwithstanding the fact that the
most stringent sanitary regulations had
been enforced everywhere else in the CON-
munity except at that one spot. This
would appear to be matter, then, in
which the mechanical principle would ap-
ply that nothing is stronger than its
weakest part. However the fact that
single reet hole may undo the work of san
itation in an entire city, it is to be remem-
bered taas the publication of city still
prevents the rapid and wide spread of Coz
tagion, for it is a monster which must have
food on which to live, and filth and noxious
atmospheres are its diet. without which it
cannot retain its hold long in any place.
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