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33
asked whether the appointment of Medical Officers of
Health has yet produced any great benefit, and my
answer has been that, although we do not effect such
rapid improvements as we hoped to have done, yet
much real benefit has resulted, in making places and
occupations more healthy than they were. By extending
the cleansing and whitewashing of every tenement
at least once every year, we offer inducements to the
people themselves to pay more attention to cleanliness.
The very fact that by our frequent inspections the
inhabitants of our wretched courts find they are cared
for, is of itself a stimulus to improve their habits of
life. Everybody is taught, by our inspections of houses
where fever or other infectious diseases have prevailed,
the necessity of taking steps to check the spread of
such diseases.
The spread of sanitary knowledge is slow, but the
continued efforts to teach people that health is the
greatest blessing of life, and that it is in the power of
almost every one to secure it, by tcmperance, cleanliness,
fresh air, good ventilation of rooms, and proper
exercise of mind and bodv, will annually increase the
numbers of those who learn and feel it to be their
interest to sacrifice sellish and seusual pleasures to the
real good of their families and themselves. All knowledge
is slow in its progress among the masses of
mankind, but it docs make its way, and there is now
a larger class of educated people than at any former
period of history. So we may be assured that knowledge
of the laws of health will continue to be diffused,
and that a larger number of our people will year by
year be added to those who have already participated
in the great blessings that result from such
knowledge.
The inhabitants of several courts about Bedfordbury
complain of the want of water on Sundays, the
very day they most require it. This results from the