View report page

17
Cubic capacity required: 2,000 cubic feet.
It is stated that owing to the bad conditions
existing the husband is compelled to sleep away from
the above house.
If, to this state of affairs be added unemployment,
poverty, fleas, bugs, lice and rats—all carriers of
disease—then it is obvious that we are liable any time
to Smallpox, Typhus Fever, Cerebro-spinal Fever,
Encephalitis Lethargica, Poliomyelitis, Relapsing
Fever, Epidemic Diarrhoea, or even Plague.
Such houses breed disease, but they also breed
resentment to those responsible, and after visiting the
scheduled areas, I can quite understand this. Time
does not permit me to say more here, than to stress
the fact that this condition of affairs undoubtedly
implies absolute negation of all social, religious, moral
and temperance considerations ! !
Public health administration, admirable as it is
in the circumstances, offers an ironical comment on
our present-day civilisation. We condemn a large
proportion of the population to live in overcrowded
houses in congested areas, ill provided with means of
cleanliness and domestic conveniences, with a smokeladen
atmosphere which obstructs such sunlight as
may be available.
These conditions inevitably favour the development
and spread of Tuberculosis and other infectious
diseases, as well as that general enfeeblement of health,
which results from breathing vitiated air and from the
absence of proper facilities for personal and domestic
cleanliness and comfort. We thereupon find it necessary
to establish Clinics, Sanatoria, etc., to deal with
the consequences of our social neglect. How much
more intelligent and humane it would be by better
housing and more sensible methods of heating and
lighting to prevent much of our present ill health.