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That the opinions as expressed above are inaccurate is proved not
only by the facts adduced in this report, but also from the improved condition
of health and diminished rate of mortality among the population of
Easington Buildings and other places in this District, which have followed
the re-arrangement and re-construction of unhealthy houses; the particulars
of which are given in my Quarterly Report for March, 1872.
Still further improvement in the rate of mortality may be looked
for when all such public sewers as have not a proper fall shall be
re-constructed, and the whole of the main drainage placed under one
Board, and not, as it is at present, under the divided authority of the
Vestries and District Boards and the Metropolitan Board of Works.
The offensive emanations from the sewers are at present a source of great
danger to the public health, charged, as they are, with the excreta of
patients suffering from typhoid fever—a disease never absent from
London—the deaths from which having annually varied in number from
4078 in 1838 to 1206 in 1876.
Some misapprehension exists respecting the danger to health arising
from the emanations of sewers. *Typhoid fever is said, upon high
authority, to be caused only by a specific poison which has been thrown
off from the body of some person sick of the same disease; and
that this disease is not produced by the emanations arising from
the decomposition of foul matter which is given off from the
sewers or from cesspools. Without explanation, the statement of
such opinion, given on high authority, is highly dangerous ; for it may
induce persons to disregard the nuisance arising from many of the public
sewers, which must always, to some extent, be charged with the excreta
of patients suffering from typhoid fever and other epidemic diseases; all
of which are, in the opinion of Sir Thos. Watson and others produced
only from germs which are given off from patients suffering from any of
the epidemic diseases. If this opinion be correct, it is obvious that the
only way of stopping the progress of an epidemio disease is by the
perfect isolation of the patient. But how to accomplish so desirable a
proceeding in the numerous cases of children, when attacked by measles,
hooping-cough and diarrhoea, I am at a loss to conjecture.
*See a very valuable Article by Sir Thos. Watson, published in the "Nineteenth
Century," May number, page 380, on the Abolition of Zymotic Disease. Sir Thos.
Watson is so sanguine, as to imagine that, "by the rigid enforcement of judicious
Sanitary Laws, these terrible diseases, with their terrible consequences, may finally
be banished from this island. The object of the enforcement of the Sanitary Laws
is to destroy the contagium ; more popularly the particles are called germs or seeds,
and each disease in the group has its own proper and peculiar seed; and to prevent
the seed of zymotic disease from taking root, the same mu3t be destroyed.
To this end the requisites are—first, the unfailing and immediate notification to
the proper authorities of the occurrence of every case—second, the instant isolation
of the sick person—third, the thorough disinfection of his clothes, furniture, and
place of isolation—fourth, vigilant and effectual measures to prevent the importation
of this disease from abroad, and to strangle it should it by mischance
return."