View report page

19
to allow property to pass from the domain of art
into that of nature, is, for a time, to lose command
over it. That which has been done, therefore, in
the City has been merely the checking of such
waste, and the suggesting of better modes for the
management of business.
A word or two more and I shall have done. In
the course of the year the medical officers of the
City Unions have attended 14,046 cases of disease
among the poor. Of these, 1,099 were cases of
fever, 1,434 of diarrhœa, and 48 of English cholera.
Each of these 2,581 cases have been separately inquired
into, and many of the sanitary orders issued
during the year have had reference to them.
It might perhaps be thought that at this juncture
of an expected visitation of cholera, I ought to
report to you of the state of our defences, and of
the manner in which an attack is to be met. I do
not, however, think that the signs of its approach
are so portent as to call for unnecessary excitement
or alarm; and even if they were, I do not know
that I could put the defences into a better condition,
for it has been my aim to keep them always in
order. It may be that these defences are not impregnable,
but I trust that the sanitary measures
which have been enforced for the last nine years,
and which are now in active operation, will serve to
fortify us as strongly as possible against the approach