London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Hanover Square 1864
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hanover Square, The Vestry of the Parish of Saint George]
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| Complaints of non-removal of dung during proper hours | 19 |
| Dung removed | 3 |
| Offensive grains removed | 1 |
| Drains cleansed and repaired | 1 |
| Limewashed and cleansed | 2 |
| Garbage and blood removed | 7 |
| Dung removed from pits and heaps when offensive | 21 |
| Rubbish offensive in yards or on waste ground | 4 |
| Slops thrown from windows and on to roofs of adjoining premises, down gullies in streets and on to carriage-ways. | 1 |
| Urinals abolished | 1 |
| Gas escapes into dwellings from Company's mains | 3 |
| Complaint as to dissection of dead horses | 1 |
| A cab stand dirty and offensive | 1 |
| Gullies offensive in streets cleansed or trapped | 9 |
| Offensive privies abolished | 1 |
| Horses removed from a skittle ground | 1 |
| Dogs, goats, and donkey removed | 3 |
| Dangerous houses reported to police | 1 |
| Chimney stacks ditto ditto | 2 |
WHAT ABE THE RESULTS OF SANITARY WORK?
Our efforts are directed against "preventible diseases,'' which
we refer to certain causes, admitting of accurate classification,
although we generally find two or more of these causes at work
together in most cases.
They are, !, the sewer poisons, which we believe to cause typhoid
fever, diarrhoea, and dysentery; and to be main vehicles for the
spread of the next class. 2. The true injections fevers, as scarlatina,
&c., which come upon us we know not whence, and abate
after a while, and which spread during their season of prevalence
by means of the exhalations and excretions of the sick. 3. The
diseases occasioned by cold, damp, and malaria, rheumatism, S.c.
4. The diseases of degeneration, due to town air, and want of
light, exercise, ventilation, cleanliness, &c., as scrofula, consumption,
&c. 5. Diseases due to indulgence of base appetites, as
syphilis and delirium tremens. 6. Accidents and the effects of
want of care and prudence, of which the deaths of children whose
clothes " ignite, no evidence how." are examples. "
1. Now respecting sewer poisons, there can be no doubt that
we are not yet nearly free from them. In the houses of the poor,
where, perhaps, 20 or 30 persons resort to one closet within the
house, they are scarcely ever free from these vapours. We have
done almost all that the law permits, in structural improvement, the
erection of new closets, the laying down drains, and so forth. Now