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5
If indeed I can attract a single reader by the adoption of a
somewhat lighter and less orthodoxly dry style of writing than
is ordinarily employed in making sanitary reports, and for the
adoption of which I am well aware I lay myselt open to severe
criticism, I shall, nevertheless, consider I am justified in adopting
it, and what is more, intend to continue to adopt it in the
future, let criticism be as severe as the several writers please.
This must be my apology for a style I shall willingly alter when
sanitary reports are duly studied, but which I have adopted with a
very definite purpose. When the sanitary report and record of vital
statistics receive a similar amount of attention to the monetary
report and the records of profit and loss, the purpose I have in view
will be served, but not till then.
There is still another class we have to meet, and in their case we
must be careful and cautious in the treatment. They read our report
and mark it well; but they dive deeper, and go further than the mere
report. Taking out of their drawers probably the various sanitary
reports pennedyear by year by my distinguished predecessors and-by
myself, they compare the statistics of this year with the statistics of
the past twenty years, in order, if possible, to answer questions such
as these—What amount of good has the sanitary work of nearly a
quarter of a century effected ? How far have the prophecies of the
earlier pioneers of Sanitary Science been fulfilled ? To what extent
has the death-rate decreased as the result of sanitary improvements ?
How far has disease been vanquished by cutting away its supplies, and
by breaking down the means by which it spreads ? These of course
are fair questions, and it is our duty to answer them—or at any rate,
to attempt to answer them. At the same time, I am not unaware of
the spirit in which these questions are usually asked. Too often
the questions imply some such argument as this:— "Our sanitary
arrangements cost so much. If we were to drop the department,
should we be much the worse off one way (admitting we might be a
little), and should we not be very much better off the other ?
Granting our sanitary department is not a mere name, and that they
do a little work which otherwise might be left undone; granting that
they keep a few people in check who might otherwise be troublesome
to their neighbours; granting that they get a few cesspools emptied
that might otherwise be a nuisance, or compel a baker to limewhite