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ration of healthy children from the infected, parents should avoid
contact with children or adults suffering from these maladies, as
much as possible; for healthy persons may convey the infection
to their own families without suffering themselves.
No children should be sent to school whilst any member
of the family is suffering from any infectious complaints. No landlord
Bhould allow a new tenant to occupy apartments in which
the previous occupants have recently suffered from infectious disease,
without having them properly cleansed and purified.
All infants should be vaccinated, as required by law; and
again, at least once in after-life—say when 14 years of age; and
no child should be admitted to school, who has not been vaccinated.
No family should occupy apartments in which there
are not 300 cubic feet of space for each person,—i.e., the length,
breadth, and height in feet, multiplied together. Every one shrinks
from the idea of being poisoned; yet all who do not observe this
rule, are merely undergoing slow poisoning. The Vestry can punish
by law any landlord who allows apartments to be occupied where
this rule is not observed.
Any person finding offensive effluvia from drains, &c., in
his house or apartments, should at once give notice to the Vestry,
that the cause of the same may be ascertained, and the evil remedied.
Parents should not allow their children to be brought up
in underground rooms. They are sure to be unhealthy, an easy
pray to Zymotic disease, and when grown up will be quite unfitted
to go through the struggle of life. Both the Vestry and the District
Surveyor have the power to restrict the occupation of underground
rooms ; yet neither have moved in this important matter.
Sufficient attention is not paid in the district to the proper
cleansing of the houses and apartments among the poor; many of
the houses and tenements are in a very filthy state, and very
much darker than they would be if properly white-washed or
lime-whited; and even light is an important element of health.
On this point, I think the Vestry might do great service by employing
the extensive powers at their command. The dwellings of
the poor should be regularly inspected, to see that they are kept
in cleanly and wholesome condition; and as far as I have found,
few would object to this proceeding. The water supply should be
kept pure, the cisterns or butts being furnished with lids. The
disgusting practice of keeping the frost from the cisterns by a
coating of horse-dung is by no means uncommon, even in the
case of the better houses. It need not be stated, that the rain
percolating the dung will convey gome of it to the drinking water.
The remarks made in my last Annual Report, upon the
water-supply, the cow-houses and slaughter-houses, remain applicable
at the present. It may be remarked that two cart-loads