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have inflicted loss of time on mothers and others
capable of earning wages. For a large number of
these cases the medical man would have had to be
paid. The sum gained to a community by health is
hardly to be estimated, but everyone is capable of
estimating the difference which death and disease
make in the history of a single family in the course
of the year. A Parish is but a congress of families,
and, as families are affluent and happy where health
and strength are maintained, so parishes become
affluent and happy when disease and death are
diminished amongst them.
Sanitary Work of 1868.
Unless the whole theory of the preventability of
certain diseases by sanitary methods and action
were untrue, you could not but have expected some
beneficial results from the course you have
pursued. In 1856 a Sanitary Inspector was
appointed, whose duty it was to attend to any
complaints of nuisances injurious to health, and to
make a systematic inspection of Houses in streets
where more than one family lived in the same house.
The performance of these duties were attended
with great success. At the same time, I found
that it was impossible for one inspector to do all
the duty required. In some districts of the Parish