Delaware state journal. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1870-1883, 1883-08-16
GU4R1STIEES.
compared With More Effective
Methods Of Sanitation,

compared Win More Effective
Methods OF Sanitation.
In the Pail Mali Budget for July goth
Edwin Chadwick, c. B., submits an
Instructive paper upon "quarantines.
He begins with brief resume OF the
defensive measures taken against the
cpd l.o of cholera which befeli Great
Britain in 1859. The course we took
at that time, he writes, WAS not to act
upon any opinion of our own, but on the
most carefully collated experiences we
could get. We examined officers who
had served amidst the heaviest
visitations of India and they declared
that guarantees were OF as little avail as
they could be against the east wind
There was uuanimous testimony in favor
of cleanliness or sanitation. In the ad-
vanced stages of disease medicine was of
no avail. But We found for the first time
that the pestilenoe was preceded by con.
ditions of generally felt bodily depression
or by premonitory symptoms which did
admit of dietatic and medical treatment,
which, when combined with or preceded
by measures of sanitation which reduced
foul atmospheric conditions, was always
etfectual. Some places were found to be
so immensely filthy that the only avail
able course was to remove the population
out into tents. After time some of the
people got tired of bivouacking and went
back into town, when they were attacked
with promonitory symptoms. They re-
turned to the tents and were relieved !;
they ventured back again to their homes
and were attacked.
Now, what We should have done accord.
ing to the practice now prevalent in
Egypt, and adopted for Italy, Spain, and
even for France, would have been to sur
round such place with strict Gordon,
to enforce quarantine, and have confined
the people in their poisoned atmosphere.
On the Egyptian practice they would
| have been confined to those infected
| places by Gordon of soldiers, and shot
down impartially il the attempted to
| pass it.
The preeminent success of our
measures, 80 far as We were enabled to
carry them out through detective local
agencies, was measured by com parison
with the mortality from the epidemic in
other equally death-rated countries on
the continent, and, tried by that test.
upwards to $4,000 lives m lst have been
saved by these same measures. BY them
the death-rate OF the first army in the
Grinea was reduced from thousands 10
hundreds in the second by them. and
chiefly by the application Of sanitary
principles to the more effectual ventila.
tion ofthe military barracks and hospitals.
and by other rudimentary measures pro.
NOTED, especially in India, where the
death-rate has been reduced from So to
| III 4 nm Inrino H. L.
saving has been effected OF $4,000 men.
or OF double that number OF cases of in.
vallding from sickness, or altogether a
saving of more than 40, 900 OF force and
OF more than e5,000,000 OF money.
Yet the work has been merely rudimen-
tary. During the last decade our health
officers, inspectors and engineers have
done little more than touch the
edge of sanitation as 1t were,
in the abatement of the more outrageous
nuisances. Yet the Registrar General
says that chad the death rate remained
as it was during the preceding decade, the
total deaths from 1871 tolSS1, inclusively,
would have been 5,548, 116, whereas they
were no more than 5,l55, 1867. Thus no less
than S92, 749 persons who under the old
regime would have died were still
living at the close of 1887
Added to this it is shown by
the last census that there has been,
within the preceding 10 years, a gain Of
two years in the duration Of life in Eng
land and Wales, mainly ascribabls to the
rudimentary works OF sanitation. Let
it be considered too how much larger
force than required for this work wonld
be needed on the continental system for
the IaiutenaDce of cordons sanitaires. in
ternal as well as external by guarantees.
which aggravate instead of mitigating
the evils to the population.
In London the death rate is now 81 in
| LOCO, but we see no reason why, under
unity of administrations, its death rate
may not be reduced to the rates to which
towns which have had much higher rates,
such as Dover, Croydon, Cheltenham
and others, have been reduced by rudi.
mentary sanitary works-namely, to some
IL per l,000-and the $4,000 deaths
and 70 times that number OF
cases of sickness and expenses Of
funerals and curative expenses saved
to an amount that would largely cover
the expenses OF effectual works OF pre-
vention. But look at the dire sanitary
rule OF continental cities dependent on
strict guarantees OF Naples, with the
finest site and climate perhaps in the
world, ana death-rate of 35 per 1000
of Milan, with a death-rate of 80 Dor
1000 and 30 with Paris and the other
cities, not to speak of Rome, with its
preventable malaria.
It is the complaint Of sanitary authori-
ties, which they are striving to get heard
in Parliament, that this sanitary service
has been left in obscurity and weakened
instead of being strengthened; and that
the result Of such depression has been
recently displayed in the army of Egypt,
where, if the war had been long instead
| OF very short one, there is every
| probability that there would
have been repetition of the disasters
which befel the first army in the Crimes
One effect of the false position of our
sanitary service and the obscurity In
which it has been kept may be said to
have been that 1t has not the influence in
the way of example that it would