View report page

SUGGESTED ALTERATIONS IN ACT. 105
by their slow experience, only by failure as well as
by success, was it possible that correct knowledge
could be obtained of the powers really needful for
fulfilling your sanitary intentions.
In carefully watching the fluctuations of health
amid your population; in investigating the causes
which determine them; and in testing, on every occasion,
how far these causes are amenable to the
control of your Act of Parliament, I have arrived at
the conclusions submitted to you in the present and
in my previous Report.
To excuse the length at which I have addressed
you, I have but another word to say. My apology
consists in the assurance, which again I lay before
you, that in spite of all your exertions, untimely and
preventable death still prevails most largely in the
population under your charge. If the deliberate
promises of Science be not an empty delusion, it is
practicable to reduce human mortality within your
jurisdiction to nearly the half of its present prevalence.
It is the sad prerogative of my profession, to
have such knowledge of death as cannot lie within
your experience. Knowing all that is implied in
each one separate instance of its visitation—how
much pain and sorrow, often how much bereavement
and destitution, we learn, perhaps better than
others, to appreciate that vast amount of social misery
which has its symbol in the high death-rate of