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5
In a previous Report I have endeavoured to
shew that where one death is prevented, there you
have prevented at least ten cases of disease. I
have also calculated, that the average value of
a human being in England is, taking the young
with the old and the rich with the poor, at
least £.100. Thus, if we calculate the money
worth of the life saved in our parish during the
year 1858, it will be found to represent a sum of
not less than £.10,000; whilst, if we calculated
the cost of each illness prevented at the sum of
£.5, we shall find that a further sum of £.5,000
has been saved. The whole sum saved, then, to
the parish, is £.15,000. I know this sum does not
appear as gained or lost in the yearly parochial
accounts, but it is nevertheless as easily proved as
though the loss of each life fell upon the poor-rates,
and the cost of each illness was defrayed from the
same fund. Every one knows the cost of disease
and death in their own family, although it does not
occur to every one to calculate how much he has
saved by the draining of his own or his neighbour's
house, the trapping of the neighbouring sewer, the
closing of the poisoned pump, or the destruction of
the adjacent fever-nests. Still, these are matters, I
repeat, which can be accounted for in hard cash,
and there is no more truthful position than that
health is wealth. When the whole public of
England is alive to this great fact, they will look
back with perfect astonishment at the apathy and
indifference with which, in past times, they have