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9
"The London Fever Hospital is separated from the Small-pox Hospital
only by the space of between thirty and forty feet, and the windows of the
wards of both establishments are immediately opposite each other; yet there
is no instance of the communication of small-pox to the typhus patients, nor
of typhus to the small-pox patients; nor of either disease to the convalescent
or to the official inmates of the adjoining establishment. There does
not appear^to be a single instance on record in any country, of the extension
of infection beyond the walls of a hospital, or even of a lazar-house, so as to
injure, in any manner, the nearest inhabitants."
Such high authorities as Drs. Haygarth, Percival, Ferrier, Carmichael
Smith, Currie, Russell, Roberts, Arnott, Christison, and many others, deny
that exhalations from the living body are capable of permanent suspension in
the atmosphere, or that they can be conveyed unchanged through pure air
to great distances. These authorities are of opinion that the property
which is possessed by the air to neutralize and destroy these exhalations
is a provision of nature for our well-being.
In investigating cases of small-pox with the view of tracing from
person to person the links of contagion, one fact must always be distinctly
proved, and that is the length of time which has elapsed since the alleged
cause of the contagion and the outbreak of the disease in the person
attacked. The period of incubation of small-pox appears to be well ascertained.
So, if a person attacked with small-pox assert that he caught the
disease by his having come in contact with a person suffering from that
disease at any period less than eleven days, it may be said with confidence
that he did not take the disease at the time alleged, but must have had the
germs of it in his body before he came in contact with that particular
person.
Extension of the Sewerage of the District.
During the twenty-three years that your Board has been in existence
it will be observed, on looking over my 90 Quarterly Reports, and the
several special Reports which have been published, that a large amount of
work has been done, and that a considerable expenditure of money has
taken place in carrying out sanitary improvements. Thus, it appears by the
report for the Quarter ending December, 1867, that 20,599 feet of new
sewers had been constructed in the District. The localities of these
sewers and dimensions of them are given in a table published at page 14
of the said report. In my report for the quarter ended March, 1872,
two additional sewers are recorded as having been constructed, viz.:
one in Mount Street, a 12-inch pipe of 330 feet in length, and the other in
Tenter Street North, and Alie Place, a 15-inch pipe of 456 feet in length.
Total length of new sewers constructed in this District up to March, 1872,
at the public cost, 21,345 feet, or upwards of four miles.