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45
matter to an extent highly injurious to the public health.* If we add to
this its liability to become still further impregnated with deleterious
substances, by being made to traverse leaden pipes, and by being received
into cisterns of the same metal, where it is generally mixed with all kinds
of other impurities, "the case," says Dr. Hassall, "is proved against the
whole of the present supplies of the metropolis." This is an unfortunate
state of things; and the difficulties which beset the question of a
thoroughly good supply of drinking water to the inhabitants are exceedingly
great--so great, indeed, as to lead one almost to despair of ever
witnessing a satisfactory solution of it. By good and very general drainage,
however, the evil may be considerably lessened, so far, at least, as the
the well waters of the district are concerned; since the great mass of
cesspools would be ultimately got rid of, and there would then be all the
less danger of contamination by percolation from these filthy and disgusting
receptacles. Drainage, indeed, may be said, and most truly said, to
be the sutnmum bonum of all efforts of sanitary legislation—the basis upon
which every other measure of social improvement must necessarily be
built; and the earnest hope of your Medical Officers of Health is, that the
far-reaching views of those members of your Board (and there are several
such upon it), whose profession it is to devise means to overcome engineering
difficulties, will shortly be brought to bear upon the realization of
this great sanitary desideratum.
I have now closed my remarks upon the general topics which I had set
myself to discuss in this report; but there occur to me several others upon
which I could have wished to have said a few words had my space permitted
me, and amongst the rest upon the adulteration of food. But here,
as it seems to me, we are beset with difficulties, the greatest of them being
the want of sufficient legal powers to deal with these frauds as they ought
to be dealt with when detected. I am deputed to say that your Medical
Officers of Health are prepared to give their best attention to this matter,
and that they will, in compliance with the expressed wish of the Board, ere
long report on one branch of the subject, viz., the sophistications practised
in the making of bread.
Conclusion.
In speaking of the creation by the Legislature of the new order of
medical men (the Health Officers of the Metropolis), a high sanitary
authority remarks, "There is abundant work before them, and such work
as must show results if it is well done. The mortality tables of the
Registrar General will be a certain tell-tale of their exertions."
It is not presumed that the deductions which your sanitary staff have
ventured to draw from the statistical data supplied by the Registrar
General, and embodied in the Tables inserted in the subjoiued Appendix,
are the soundest that could be derived from such data; nor is it thought
that other and more just conclusions may not be arrived at by those who
may be disposed to apply the test or "tell-tale" indicated above; but
there will, it is considered, be this advantage in the publication and
* The mean permanent hardness of the Southwark and Vauxhall Company's water,
at the works at Hampton, is 7.07; its total solid residue, 0.313; its saline constituents,
0 293. In passing through the pipes to long distances it appears to gain somewhat
in hardness, but lose in solid and saline constituents.