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148
It will be observed that the paving of yards is prescribed
"for the prevention or' remedy of insanitary conditions,"
a fact which is, sometimes, I fear, lost sight of. That
paving is "necessary" for this purpose is indubitable, and on
this account I have been insistent in pressing the matter, from
time to time, upon the attention of the Sanitary Committee. I
venture to think that more would be done in this direction, by
Sanitary Authorities generally, if due weight were attached to
the hygienic importance of cleanliness in the surroundings of
dwelling-houses; and I am glad to have the opportunity of
enforcing my own feeble utterances on the subject by citation
of the views of the Medical Officer to the Local Government
Board, who in a recent publication* refers to "the circumstances
of the soil and surroundings... favourable
to the vitality and multiplication of the typhoid bacillus," the
efficient agent in the causation of enteric fever. "They are
(he states) that the soil should be pervious, that it should be
permeated with a sufficiency of decaying—preferably animal—
organic matters, that it should possess a certain amount of
moisture, and that it should be subject to a certain temperature.
And then (he continues) let us consider what means can
be adopted to deprive the soil of one or more of these conditions
which appear to favour the retention of the vitality and
power of the typhoid bacillus, and to prevent that organism
from gaining access to the soil in the neighbourhood of human
dwellings"; and here my point comes in, the author proceeding
to say that, "to this end he would in the first place
advocate the paving of open spaces about dwellings, where
these open spaces are of small area and are liable to become
contaminated with excreta. In this way fouling of, as well
as penetration by, a pathogenic micro-organism into the
underlying soil, is practically prevented." He adds that " it
*" Soil and Circumstance in their Control of Pathogenic Organisms," By Sir
Richard Thorne, K.C.B., F.R.S., whose observations, it may be mentioned, are
based, largely, upon investigations made for the Medical Department of the Local
Government Board by Dr. Sidney Martin,