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perplexing. I would remind you that no Sanitary authority has
ever successfully resisted an invasion of Small Pox, nor has the
intruder, when in possession, ever been more than partially
amenable to control. " Thou canst not tell whence it cometh, or
whither it goeth." This much I may venture to add, that if by
any prophetic power I could prognosticate an outbreak of Small
Pox this time next year, I have very little, though I have a little,
to offer you by way of suggestion, as to any better means of
organising our forces meantime, or as to any very different
or more certain mode of attack when the enemy is actually in our
midst. The members of the Sanitary Committee will bear me out,
I am sure when I say that there is nothing easier than for those
who have no responsibility, to criticise with unmeasured severity
the work of those upon whom the responsibility rests. Even the
appeal to print, although it may appear to some to be evidence of
remarkable activity, may, and often does, interfere with the work of
the real workers, and most certainly complicates the labours, both
of yourselves as a Sanitary Committee, and of your officers, who
are engaged in carrying out your orders.
The bad condition of the drainage and houses of the district,
the alleged overcrowding, the occupation of underground rooms,
were all, you will remember, cited against us as superinducing
causes of the outbreak.
As most of these matters, however, were subsequently investigated
by you personally, I do not propose making any comment
upon them; my own conviction being that in the Streets on the
Western side of the Caledonian Road in the Thornhill Ward,
where a poor and negligent population are thickly located, nothing
is absolutely required for the certain spread of the disease, except
the presence of specific infection. The history of the epidemics of
the past has only been repeated in this locality in the present
instance, and is even now as I write, in the case of Scarlet Fever,
being again repeated.
Respecting the origin of the disease on this particular occasion,
I will only remind you that until the first death had been registered
in the first week of September, 1876, no case had been heard of by
your Sanitary Officers, although it was afterwards discovered that