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which might at any moment become a focus of disease. Many of
the other inspections also tend rather to the prevention than to the
removal of nuisances, which might otherwise exist and give cause
for well-grounded complaints, or become the means of serious
mischief; and this preventive side of our sanitary work should not
be forgotten when such work is under review, although we cannot
measure it in exact quantities.
The Removal of Dust and House-refuse is also frequently the
result of your Inspectors' visits and observations, though these
removals are not included as amendments in the table.
The absence of any contagious epidemic has considerably
lessened the number of houses and rooms disinfected, but when
found requisite such disinfections have been effectually carried out.
The Saturday night cleansing of portions of the Channels of
the Essex and Caledonian Roads, and the summer use of carbolic
acid in the watering of some of the streets, and of powder in the
manner described in previous Reports, were again sanctioned by
the Sanitary Committee.
BELLE ISLE.
Another matter of considerable importance connected with
Table XIV. deserves our notice and consideration. The District of
Belle Isle and its factories, to which I refer, is admittedly a vexed
question, and it appears to me likely that so long as it exists at all,
it will always remain so, as it must of necessity occasionally give
rise to complaint, until it ceases to be the centre for an aggregation
of a number of offensive businesses.
Since my appointment as your Medical Officer of Health, I
have very carefully inspected the whole of these establishments,
now numbering 38 (being 13 less than in 1868), and found them to
be in a most satisfactory condition, completely fitted as they are
with every requisite apparatus and appliance, both for preventing
the escape and for destroying the noxious fumes which are generated
in such places, and except in two or three instances, where trifling
amendments and improvements were needed, the state of the whole
was all but absolutely perfect—reflecting the highest credit upon the
Sanitary Committee, my predecessors in office and your Inspector.