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44
1911]
its officials and the people of Islington may well be proud; and which ought to
encourage them to continue the good work of the past, and to make still greater
efforts in the future, even if a greater expenditure should have to be incurred,
in teaching the people how to be healthy, and in still further improving the
conditions amidst which they live. This will prove to be true economy, for
there can be no doubt that the amount of money, spent in saving lives by
improving sanitary conditions, never even approximates the money value of
the lives that have been saved, or the cost of those things which the loss of
these lives represents, e.g., of funerals, sickness, medicines, loss of wages, and
pauperism. A human life has been valued at £400, and on that basis the
result of the sanitary work of Islington since 1893, as shown by the death
returns of 1911, was the saving of 1,935 lives, which last year alone represented
a money value of £794,000; or even taking the value of a life at only half the
amount stated, it would still represent the enormous sum of £397,000 saved to
the community in one year. Judge then what enormous sums of money must
have been saved by good sanitary administration during a number of years.
It runs into millions. And who reaped the benefits? The ratepayers. Becaust
the sums of money that would have been lost through the evils attendant on
sickness and death, would otherwise have been spent on food, clothing, housing,
amusement, and all the other necessaries and luxuries of life. It is therefore, to
the interest of the ratepayers to spend their money with no niggardly hand, but
without lavishness, in improving the health of the people; more especially as they
themselves are likely to benefit physically and financially in the results that accrue;
and for aught any one of them knows, may result in warding off death or illness
from himself, and in the prolongation of his life. If only a Medical Officer of
Health could say to an individual member of his council or to an individual
citizen of his town: "You, or your wife, or your child will die if your council
do not spend money in rigidly enforcing certain sanitary laws; but if it is
spent, they will live " ; or patting a person on the back say to him : " My advice
to the sanitary authority has saved your life " ; would there not be an immediate
and an enormous stimulus given to sanitary work, in its broadest aspects ? And
yet we know that the active administration of the sanitary laws do save lives;
and, therefore, no one can positively say to-day, that his life has not been
saved owing to our improved sanitary conditions, although he still grumbles at the
cost. The pity of it is that his indebtedness to the Medical Officer of Health
cannot be brought home to him in the same way as the indebtedness of a
patient to his physician or surgeon, who has saved his life; for then the work of
Medical Officers of Health, by whose offorts and by the advice given to sanitary