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snaps its fingers at burial clubs, insurance offices, chemists, magistrates,
judges, and juries.
With a considerable experience in the course of my practice in
questions bearing on Toxicology, I do not hesitate to state that if
cremation becomes common, poisoning cases will increase. Let a
baronet, if he pleases, burn the remains of his wife. Let us be sensible
enough not to follow a bad example. There is such a thing as
a love of peculiarity and of trying to do things differently to other
people. I envy no one such a love. There is, too, in some men, a
most inordinate desire to shock the sensibilities of others by the saying
outrageous things and by the doing outrageous deeds. To make
one shudder by the assertion of bold impieties or by the commission
of wild extravagancies, seems to some men the perfection of pleasure.
They are a despicable class. They imagine impertinence can take
the place of knowedge, and that uncultured rudeness is the mark
of a gentleman. I have sufficient confidence in the good sense of
the English people to believe, that they hate a retrograde step from
civilization to barbarism, as much as they love an onward step to a
more perfect civilization.
DIRTY ROADS.
Amongst the many subjects of consideration that have been
brought before you as the Sanitary Authority, has been the condition
of certain muddy roads and specially of the Upper Cottenham Road.
On this matter an extreme pressure, I must say, of a somewhat unjustifiable
nature, was brought to bear on myself as an officer of
the parish, to advise the Sanitary Committee to take action on the
ground that a dirty road was a sanitary nuisance. A deputation
waited on the committee in reference thereto, headed by a gentleman
who urged startling scientific opinions to rouse the authority, as he
believed, to a sense of its duty. On this matter I placed my views
before the committee in writing, and I shall content myself, without
saying more, by printing my report as well as the report of the
Sanitary Committee submitted to the Vestry in reference thereto.
These will be sufficient to show that I had fully and frequently
considered the subject, but was unable to advise action because I
was convinced such action would not be successful.