View report page

Annual Report of the Officer of health—1868—1869. 41
Medical Officer of Health, of Glasgow, to the inquiry of the alarmed inhabitants of that
City, as to the cause of the excessive mortality during the last quarter, in one week of
which the death-rate had risen to 47 deaths in 1000 persons living? Why that it was
owing "especially to the low standard of domestic comfort, the overcrowding, general
squalor, and physical degradation of a large section of the population; and these, again,
are the direct results of permitting generation after generation to be brought up in houses
of the worst construction, in which morality, decency, and cleanliness, are alike impossiable''.
Here,then, then, is the evil, or at least the most prominent evil, that now influonces
Our social condition, and that fully accounts for the presence of fevor, and our high morality,
and the one to which all our endeavours should be strenuously exercised to remove.
If a man can only pay eighteen pence a week for rent, and for which ho has a kennel, what
can he do? He can produce fever, and distribute it broadcast over the neighbourhood;
which he diligently does. Fever is sown; fever springs up, and is gathered, and wo stand
amazed at the result. We might stand amazed at any other result, I think. Unfortunately
in the building of houses for the poor—and I mean the poor—there is no scope for the
genius of the architect; and no occasion is afforded for a grand exhibition at the laying of
the foundation stone, and yet is there no greater occasion offered for both when the end is
, Considered. The erection of Palatial Hospitals may offer gain and glory to the architect, whilst their foundation
stones may be laid by the Highest in the Land, yet their object is
not to prevent sickness, but merely to euro it—a very inferior department. Suitable human
abitations would tend to lessen the need for Hospitals, and it should bo our aim to disp???se
with them. Indeed, when sickness and death comes, what more fit and appropriate
than that it should find the sufferer in the midst of his family, and that these should be
about him who are nearest and dearest to him. The time may come when Hospitals shall
stand as monuments of the misapplication of wealth. Little headway has however as yet
made in this direction. It behoves these who are possessed of wealth and knowledge.
nay, it is their bounden duty to further with all the power and influence they can command
the sanitary cause. I had rath see it progress by moral means than by legal means;
from willingness within, than from force without. Moral apathy cannot be radically
changed by physical coercion. "When wo see what can be done by the energy and unwearied
zeal of our churches to civilize and house the black savage, sunely something might be
done, more than has ever yet been done to civilize and house the white savage, who is
jostling us on every side, and fast becoming a fear and dread to the land. "Where is the
landlord who is spending his money not in pineries and hot houses, but in schools and
wash houses and drains; who is less intent on the magnificence of his own grand house than
in providing cottages where drainage is possible ?" A landlord might do both, and to do
both might be his duty. "Whilst building his mansion and pineries, he might also at the
same time build schools and wash houses. Doing one docs not necessarily involve neglect in
doing the other. But his first care ought to be for the necessities of these over whom
by Providence ho has been made overseer. His luxuries might wait. The physical condition
of man has been too little cared for. A degraded race will of necessity be a criminal
race. In the faces of our hardened malefactors may their characters bo traced. It was
justly observed by one of the Presidents of the Public Health Sections of the Social Sciencee
Association, who when some onesaid to him that we should think much more of the sold
than of the body, replied, That the samo God who made the soul made the body also; and