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disinfection is employed at Crossness, the large and increasing
amount of sewage, even after treatment, cannot fail to be
a dangerous increment to the river.
For even if the Metropolitan I3oard is able to overcome
the enormous difficulties with which it has to contend,
and succeeds in so treating the effluent, that the river, and the
sediment precipitated upon its banks, shall cease to be an
anxiety to Londoners, I scarcely think the inhabitants of
the Metropolis will forego the hope that the Metropolitan
Board of Works, in its wisdom, at some near future shall
secure fcr them a river no longer redolent with chemicals
and viscid with the deoderizrd effluent from the presses of
Crossness, but a stream whose tide, crisp from the sea, shall
l>car in the flow, a store of ozone to replenish the impoverished
air, and again in the ebb, draw back in its waters, the oxidized
impurities of the atmosphere.
I have now discussed the principal causes, which in my
opinion, aftect the death-rate, but there are many other
causes in operation, which have in no small degree contributed
to longeMty. The art and science of medicine has
advanced with rapid strides during the last forty years, and
the wider view taken of disease, the improvement in
collateral science, and the more enlightened practice of today,
must have been the means of the prolongation of many
lives.
The Temperance movement, again, has had much influence
in the increase of the prosperity, and the health, of the
working classes. This, like many other influences, has had
an effect alone made possible, by the education conferred
upon the masses, as a result of the establishment of the
Board Schools.
Temperance is one of the elementary principles, in the
preservation of health. Anyone who has the health ot the
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