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36
Justices of Licences to several Cow-keepers upon whose premises
superficial wells existed, which your Medical Officer of Health and
Sanitary Committee were strongly of opinion should be filled up,
for which reason their Licences were on that occasion opposed for
the second time by the Vestry.
My own professional view of the question is most completely
in accord with the views of my predecessors, Dr. Ballard and Dr.
Corfield, and I must express my deep regret that the wells should
not have been abolished, the water from which might at any
moment become extremely dangerous both to health and life.
Had I consulted my own feelings, I should very much have
preferred to have given you in this report an outline of some
scientific work with which I have been occupied during the past
year, and what I regard as its practical bearings. But as I have
with great labor (as I deemed it my duty) endeavoured thoroughly
to comprehend the exact state of our parish statistics as a guide
to my future work, I have thought some of these might be of
interest to the members of the Vestry. This must be my excuse
for a lengthy and I fear not very interesting report.
Lastly, let me say the duties of a Medical Officer of Health
are now-a-days not easy, for they are duties about which every
body has formed his own opinion. One will be always accusing
him of doing too much, another of not doing enough. Nor do I
expect to please all in this matter. I am perfectly conscious of
two grand pitfalls in Sanitary Science. Into both men have fallen ;
and having fallen into either, it seems well nigh hopeless for them to
extricate themselves. One is an extreme sensationalism, bordering
on the ridiculous—the other, an extreme indifference, bordering on
carelessness. The one side see a camel in every gnat, the other
fail to see a camel though it may be before their very eyes. It
seems to me that before long we shall be fearful of drinking a drop
of water lest some imaginary "previous sewage contamination''
of an age long gone by may be present, an age probably before a
human soul had been called into existence; or we shall tremble
as we look at our milk jug for fear it may contain the seeds of
Typhoid. We shall sit down with a shudder to our very meals,
lest the life-sustaining food may have become by the adulterator's
hand little less than a dish of poison. We shall fear to breathe a
breath of the air of heaven, lest we inhale with it the germs of