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5
With regard to our own proceedings, and the means by
which we hope to lessen the amount of mortality, we beg
to mention these three lines of operation.
In the first place, by encouraging the supply of drier,
lighter, and better ventilated homes for the poor, we diminish
the amount of scrofula, consumption, rickets, and similar
maladies, which consist in a degenerate and ill-nurtured state
of constitution, and which not only themselves destroy life
largely, but also render their victims unable to cope with
any other disorder that may befall them.
In the second place, by getting rid of the poisonous gases
arising from cesspools and drains, by banishing all filth and
offensive refuse, and by freely admitting pure air, we
remove the sources from which some zymotic diseases are
believed to arise absolutely, and from which they all certainly
gain malignity and the power of spreading.
In the third place, by promoting the healthiness and
comfort of the poor man's home, we counteract, in some
measure, various temptations to intemperance, and other
breaches of morality, and the tendency to the diseases
which are liable to follow.
Besides, we notice any circumstances whatever which
bear upon the health of the people, so that they may be
enquired into, even if they cannot be immediately remedied.
On the 29th of October we attended a Special Petty
Sessions at the Board Room, Mount Street, held for the
purpose of hearing applications for licences for slaughterhouses,
when five out of twenty-nine applications from the
Out-wards, and four out of seventeen from the In-wards were
rejected. The removal of the slaughter-house from under
the densely-peopled houses in Grosvenor Market, is a matter
for congratulation; although, neither in this case, nor in