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12 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
In reflecting upon the subject of public health, we must remember that the present
sanitary condition of our cities, towns, and villages, is the result of many centuries of
growth, left to spread and extend itself in the most irregular manner, without any hand
having been put forth to restrain or to guide it. And it will take, not many centuries we
may hope, but many years of unremitting labour, and of sound and liberal policy, to rid ourselves
of the evils which we are now experiencing in the form of preventable sickness and
death. We cannot yet reasonably expect to see any great decrease in our mortality, nor any
decisive evidence of the lengthening out of the number of the years of our lives. Progress
which ends in permanent good is necessarily slow, often halting in its course, often apparently
going back. Between the labour and the reward time must intervene. Like the husbandman,
we must wait patiently, knowing full well that the harvest will come, and if not (with
reference to the subject now under consideration) in this generation, then in that which
is to come. They will reap the fruit of our works, as we have reaped the fruit of the works
of those who have preceded us ; and I hope with a hundredfold increase of all that tends
to satisfy their mental and material wants. The onward, moral, and intellectual progress
of the human race depends far more upon the sanitary state which surrounds it than has ever
yet entered into our imaginations to conceive. I think that it would be better for us if those
whose special avocation it is to aid and strengthen our spiritual nature paid more heed to
this. I am confident their power of doing good would be much increased. It has
been repeatedly stated by city and town missionaries, that their efforts are constantly being
thwarted and destroyed by the low state of morality, which want of means for cleanliness
and for the common decencies of life create, develop, and continue; and the teachings of
habits of order and propriety to children at school, are neutralized by the filthy and
neglected home.
Out of the 13S4 deaths in the year ending March, 1860, no less than 349 have died
from Zymotic diseases; and in this number were 88 from small-pox. With other districts,
both London and country, we have suffered severely from the ravages of this disease, as
tiie proportion of deaths testify ; and this will permit me again to urge upon your notice
the necessity of gaining from the Legislature a plain, working, compulsory Vaccination Act.
Surely some of our senators are equal to the task of framing such a one. It is monstrous
that we should longer permit any one, whether from idleness, ignorance, or prejudice, to
suffer their children rto become fresh sources of poison, circling wider and wider through a
neighbourhood, carrying with it disfigurement, blindness, and death. An interference with
the liberty of the subject to prevent this, is an interference highly to be desired. And there
need exist no delicacy in the taking away such liberty, any more than in restraining men
from knocking us on the head, or doing us other bodily injury. Small-pox is a disease over
which we have perfect control, and which, were vaccination thoroughly carried out, might
be banished from these dominions. Dr. Watson, in his Lectures on the Principles and
Practice of Physic, tells us that, " in Denmark small-pox had at one time disappeared before
the defensive influence of compelled vaccination. Chance, and a careless security,
engendered by the absence of the pest, have led to its re-introduction there." Miss
Nightingale (a name to be mentioned with respect) thinks that it may originate spontaneously,
and that there was not " once a first specimen in the world which went on
propagating itself in a perpetual chain of descent."She writes:" I have seen with my
eyes, and smelt with my nose, small-pox growing up, either in close rooms or in overcrowded
wards, where it could not by any possibility have been ' caught,' but must have begun,"
From this she would inculcate cleanliness in its widest sense. With the lesson taught I
heartily agree; but I doubt much the theory set up.
The following Table shows the number of deaths that have occurred from various
Zymotic diseases in the different quarters of the last three years. The blank places are owing