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50
these Annual Reports during the past fourteen years,
furnish, it is submitted, tolerably fair grounds for predicting
a favourable future. The tendency of this history
has always been to teach us to rely more upon preventive
than any other procedures to sustain a satisfactory condition
of the public health, and there is perhaps no hygienic
question claiming the attention of the inhabitants more
urgently at the present time than the preservation of our
Commons and Heaths for the purposes of healthful
recreation. This is essentially a sanitary question, and
since it must be generally admitted that we have not too
many of these breathing spaces around our ever-growing
Metropolis, it is to be hoped any attempts to diminish the
area of the few we have now left us, whilst giving back
no equivalent advantages, will—the alleged rights of lords
of manors notwithstanding—be successfully resisted.
R. HARLAND-WHITEMAN,
Medical Officer of Health
for Putney and Roehampton.
Chairman of the Associated Health
Officers of the Wandsworth District.