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But, whilst I am indulging in the retrospect of the not
inconsiderable good that Ave have effected, the reflection presses
itself upon me of the far greater amount of hygienic evil
which yet remains unremedied around us. By a comparison
of the mortality of London with that of sixty-three tolerably
healthv districts of the country, it was found that our excess
%/ *
of deaths, in 1858, was no fewer in amount than 17,894.—
Some portion of this excess is no doubt to be attributed to
accidents and other causes incidental to the more active
occupations of a great city; but, when all reasonable allowance
has been made on these accounts, there remains an
appalling number of deaths which it should be the ceaseless
effort of our measures to make less and less. This, Gentlemen,
is, as it appears to me, an occasion on which Ave can
with, the strictest propriety occupy ourselves for a few
moments with the interesting speculation of what the measures
and the projects are that may be practically available
to us, and what the prospect is of good which they afford.
Foremost in any such direction of our thoughts, we come
to the momentous question of main-sewerage. It might, in
the present day, be regarded as an idle dream, if we presumed
to imagine a forthcoming time, when the refuse Avhich
it has been so hard a problem for us adequately to get rid of
shall furnish of itself more than an ample provision for all
the sanitary expenses of all the district and other boards of
this vast metropolis, yet stranger and less plausible imaginations
have been before now completely realized. Meanwhile
t he evils of our present state press on us Avith a perilous significance.
We had last summer a severe visitation of Scarlatina,
but Avhat think you—if that epidemic had been Cholera—
would have been the consequences, and where the limit of