View report page

[No. 14.
REPORT
on the
HEALTH OF PADDINGTON
DURING THE HALF-YEAR ENDING
MICHAELMAS, 1866,
BY J. BURDON SANDERSON, M.D.,
Medical Officer of Health.
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE VESTRY.
Population of Paddington, April, 1861 75,807.
Vestry Hall; November, 1865.
The half-year which has just terminated has been marked by events relating
to the public health of an unusual character. Early in the spring, public
attention was directed to the epidemics which were then ravaging the North
of Europe, and danger was looked for from the shores of the Baltic. No
sooner had the horizon cleared northwards, than the harbingers of another
tempest appeared to the south-west, in the countries bordered by the Red Sea
and the Levant. Cholera had sprung up in an unknown way among the crowds
of pilgrims returning from the shrine of the Prophet, and had been carried by
them to Alexandria and other places on the Delta of the Nile. The hope at
first entertained that it would confine itself to the populations among which it
originated was soon found to be groundless, for the eastern pestilence broke out
in other more distant sea-ports on the shores of the Mediterranean,—not following
any particular direction or order, but often appearing almost simultaneously
in places at considerable distances from each other. During the last month the
epidemic has assumed a much more alarming aspect. On the one hand it has
prevailed very extensively in Paris, where it has destroyed about 4000 persons,
while on the other it is gradually extending from the countries which adjoin
the Black Sea, into Russia and Russian Poland,—thus embracing the whole of
central Europe.
The problem of the origin of cholera,—so important in relation to quarantine
and other national measures of prevention—remains still unsolved, and a
joint commission of representatives of all the European nations is now being
organized to investigate it. But fortunately the uncertainty with which this
question is surrounded does not extend to that of the causes by which the spread
of the disease is promoted. Here all are pretty well agreed. Whether contagionists
or non-contagionists,whether believing that the poison of cholera is conveyed
to us in the water we drink or in the air we breathe,—that it is dependent on the
absence of ozone or on some mysterious alteration of the "occult properties" of
the atmosphere, all are willing to admit that its preference for particular localities
is determined by the same well-known causes which induce diarrhoea—the contamination
of air or water with putrescible impurities—and that the only reasonable
thing to do, in anticipation of cholera, is to get rid of these evils.
In the matter of water-supply, there can be do doubt that London is infinitely
better off than it was either in 1849 or 1854, but as regards atmospheric impurity
it is sad to think how little real good has been accomplished. It is true that we
have a system of main-drainage, of which we may be justly proud, and sewers
which are models of efficient construction, but nevertheless Londoners are
scarcely less liable to be poisoned with sewer gases than they were ten years ago.
Everywhere are to be found houses of which the drains are constructed of such
permeable materials that the sewer air filters freely through them into the very
sleeping rooms. Can it be doubted that if cholera comes it will find out 6uch
houses, and that their occupants will suffer severely, unless in the mean time, the
inadequate powers we possess for the reconstruction of house-drains can be
stretched into more effectual exercise than has hitherto been found possible ?
During the winter, the internal drainage of the houses is the one thing
which ought to engage our attention. The abatement of overcrowding &nd the