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ferred to and the decision of your Committee thereon should be the
more clearly understood, they recommend that, the said Report of
your Medical Officer of Health, which is attached hereto, should be
read to the Vestry.
All which is submitted.
(Signed), CORNELIUS WEST,
Chairman, Sanitary Committee.
Vestry Offices,
February 19th, 1875.
A FOCUS OF DEADLY MIASMA.
This startling title being given to a spot in our parish, associated
as it was with the fact that cases of Typhoid Fever had occurred in
a house near, necessarily attracted the attention of the Vestry. The
whole matter was gone into with great care, and I cannot do better
than print the report sent up to the Vestry after a prolonged and
careful inquiry by the Sanitary Committee.
The report was adopted by your Vestry, and it may therefore
be permitted to me to express much more emphatically than a
committee could possibly do, my strong conviction that this was
simply the muddy and unmade road question over again, the harmless
but unsightly field in front of Clifton Terrace being made a scape
goat. There was never in my opinion the slightest foundation for
the assertion that the field had been in an unsanitary state at all, the
extravagant charge made against it being simply ridiculous, in spite
of its alarming tendency. The evidence which supported the theory
of the "Deadly Miasma" was to use no stronger term, so
contradictory, as to make it utterly untenable and worthless in any
judicial proceedings, as my experience in medical jurisprudence
enables me to state most positively, and as I think will be seen on
reference to the report which follows.
The cases of Typhoid Fever it is true gave perhaps something
like speciousness to this singular and fanciful indictment of the
field, but they occurred exclusively, as acknowledged, in one house
only, and as I believe in one family only; but whether that be
so or not, the cause, in my opinion, is fully established by
the fact that the first case was that of a girl who went daily to