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9
II.—THE SOIL, WATER, AND AIR.
the soil.
The health of a community is intimately dependent upon the condition of the soil
upon which it dwells. The water drawn from that soil, and the air floating above it,
both partake of its characters. Universal experience has made it familiar to mankind
that certain soils are favourable to the preservation of the health of the inhabitants
upon them, and that other soils are productive of disease. It is equally proved that
unhealthy soils are susceptible of much improvement by artificial means; that their
morbific influences may b.e, more or less, effectually counteracted. Ague is no longer
known in localities where, not many years ago, it was endemic. But if unhealthy
sites may be made healthy by care, it is equally true that sites naturally the most salubrious
may, by neglect, become pestiferous and deadly. It also appears to be true that
sites formerly characterised by particular forms of disease may, in the course of occupation,
undergo such changes in their condition as to get rid of their original morbid
characteristics, and generate new diseases of a different character. Sometimes, again,
the old forms of disease may persist, whilst new ones are superadded. Thus, the
neighbouring district of Whitechapel still supplies numerous cases of ague, indicating
that the original malarious character of the soil is retained through all the changes produced
by a dense population; whilst low fevers and other epidemics springing from
fresh causes of empoisonment of the soil are constantly generated. It is possible that
intermittent fevers were at one time prevalent in Shoreditch also, but through the
dryness of the soil, brought about by the construction of drains, sewers, wells, and
houses, these have now in a great measure, if not entirely, disappeared. The epidemic
diseases that have replaced those indigenous to the soil are principally due to the new
sources of empoisonment arising from a dense population. I showed in my preliminary
Report that the great danger to the inhabitants of this district arose from the rapid
growth of its population, which had far outstripped all provisions for the proper accommodation
of the inhabitants. No body of men can long occupy the same spot of ground
and preserve their health, unless they take certain means for removing the impurities
they generate. Nomadic tribes are driven to shift their encampments not alone because
the surrounding pastures are exhausted, but also by the great sanitary necessity of
escaping from a site rendered insalubrious by their occupation. In like manner, armies,
and even regiments, are under the alternative of frequently moving their ground, or of
paying the penalty of sickness and death. But the condition of civilized life is a permanent
dwelling-place. The inhabitants of towns can only preserve their health by
constant and vigilant attention to the purification of the soil which it is their lot
to occupy.