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judged, and not by exceptional and isolated instances of either censure
or commendation, perhaps, equally unmerited, as resulting from an
individual experience, common only in either case to a very few.
Nor is it venturing too much to predict, knowing what we do of
the past, that there is no disappointment in store for us in this
respect. No one can doubt but that greater improvement may be
confidently expected from the patient and constant efforts of those
into whose able hands the great sanitary work of Dusting has so
happily fallen, and who have already (as I have shown) done so
much, in spite of the unfortunate circumstances which preceded
and attended upon their succession to an executive inheritance of
such evil repute, that years of successful labour may be necessary
before this can be surmounted, and a thoroughly satisfactory
reputation for efficiency be established.
CONCLUSION.
I have again to apologise for the somewhat light style I have
adopted in writing this report. I confess it goes against the grain to
do so, and nothing but the hope that I may gain a reader or two would
tempt me from recording our Sanitary Work in strictly scientific
phraseology, a course far more in accordance with my feelings, and
less likely, I am aware, to lay me open to criticism. Sanitarians
have to lament deeply the little interest that the public take in
sanitary work. Many profess an interest, and their professions are
real and honest, so long as our action, as a sanitary authority, has
reference to their neighbour's dwelling, his water supply, his drains,
and so forth. Up to this point, many a man is a good sanitarian,
and would be very strict—perhaps too strict—in his demands ; but
touch him, or touch his home, complain of his own water-closets,
drains or traps, and his earnest sanitarianism soon dwindles away
into thin air before a possible plumber's bill of thirty shillings.
Disinfection, in the eyes of such people (and they are by no means
a small class), is an excellent thing, and so long as you do not ask
them to carry it out, you are perfectly right, in their opinion, to insist