argently required that it should be undertaken at once, and special means will be required to affect it.
185. The importance of the house drains and the danger incurred by neglect in their construction have been already pointed out. In England, with workmen to some extent familiar with the work, it has been found next to impossible to secure proper design and execution by leaving the work to private builders, no matter how complete are the regulations drawn up for their guidance. The necessity for complete and accurate work is not recognised, and as badly done should be taken up again. The cost also is vastly greater than if the work be carried out on a large scale by a central authority.
With respect to the defects in existing houses in paragraphs 146 and 148 Mr. Chadwick speaks as follows:
149-A moment's consideration of the examples of Chinese dwellings which I have given-examples not selected for badness but fairly representative-will show that overcrowding exists to a very serious extent, both as to the number of inhabitants within a given cubic space, and to the provision of proper proportion of open space for light and ventilation, and for giving free access to the building. Other sanitary defects also are equally apparent. The type of house in Hongkong is quite identical to that in use on the neighbouring mainland, and I am certain that the lower-class population is more densely packed together in Hongkong, and worse provided with appliances for cleanliness than they are in China.
118.As to the arrangement of the buildings on the ground, the construction of buildings on sites partly excavated in the side of a hill is most objectionable, for the basement or lower storey is rendered damp by the percolation of water from the hill above, and the production of malaria is the consequence.
It is well known that buildings on such sites are exceedingly unhealthy, and that the most efficient means be adopted effectively to cut off the subsoil moisture from the floor of the house. In Victoria, not only are these precautions neglected, but the condition is aggravated by the use of the retaining wall of the ground above as the back wall of the house, no space whatsoever being left. The construction of buildings without a proper space between their wall and the ground behind should be absolutely prohibited. These extracts, which could easily be multiplied, not only from Mr. Chadwick's report, but others by the Surveyor-General and Colonial Surgeon, show clearly the necessity of remedying the sanitary defects in our midst. Were it necessary I am sure your Excellency, who, I believe, made an inspection of the town two years ago with my hon. friend the Surveyor-General, could testify to the evils which call for immediate remedy in our midst.
I now pass to the second point. Given these evils, what proof is there or what assurance can be given that if these laws are passed and the works carried out we will be any the better for them? I hope it will not be thought I wish for one moment to read to this Council a lecture on sanitary science. I shall be as brief as possible, but I wish to quote a few instances to show the beneficial effects which follow on all sanitary improvements and what an effectual preventive against cholera and other diseases a good sanitary condition is.
It is only about forty years since efforts began to be made in England to ameliorate the great mass of the people. Before that time, the benefits derivable from sanitary science seemed to have been forgotten or ignored until the powerful voice of cholera, typhus, and other diseases roused the people from their lethargy I trust that we, being forewarned will be forearmed and profit by the experience of others, and that we will seriously follow out that good old maxim, prevention is better than cure.
Many lives have been spared and much misery saved by sanitary measures. Mr. Baldwin Latham, in his work on Sanitary Engineering, after stating the importance of sanitary measures, gives a table showing the results in twelve towns in which sanitary measures have been adopted. He then says:-
It will be seen by a glance at the above table that the sanitary works which have been carried out in the places named have had a marked effect in staying the ravages of disease and death, and they have also had the effect of prolonging the average duration of life. The good that has arisen from the provision of sanitary works wherever properly carried out, may be taken as the harbinger of more hopeful times, when the benefits of sanitary measures will be better understood, and more extensively adopted.
He then speaks of the loss of life and the national prosperity being impeded by the neglect of sanitary measures. He points out that health is the capital of the labouring man, and says it has been calculated that for every unnecessary death we have twenty-eight cases of sickness. He then says that the expenditure in Croydon has amounted to £195,000.
The average mortality of the town of Croydon for seven years, previous to the construction of sanitary works, was 23.63 per thousand, and for thirteen years since they have been in operation it has been 18.64 per thousand, showing a saving of 5.03 per thousand per annum. The mortality in the year 1843 was 28.16 per thousand, and in the year 1867, 16.6 per thousand; in 1843 the population was 19,339; in 1867 it was 50,750 showing that the population increased 100 per cent. and the death-rate reduced 40 per cent. between the extreme periods.
Then those figures are worked out and he shows what the saving has been in money. You have 2,439 funerals saved at £5 each, £12,195. For cases of sickness prevented £60,975, and the value of labour saved consequent upon the prolongation of life and the absence of sickness, £186,929. The figures add up to £249,999, whereas the expenditure was only £195,000. But this money argument is a most sordid one, for who will attempt to set a money value on human life, which is priceless. And when we see in one small town 2,439 persons saved from death, it shows us the great responsibility incurred by those who have charge of sanitary matters if they neglect the warning. It is as if we took the same number of people out of their homes and put them to death. This is really what we do if we allow them to breathe poisoned air, or allow them to drink impure water when we can prevent it.
I have trespassed so much on your time, that I have little time left to speak of a subject which I feel to be most important, and that is the comparative immunity from invasion of cholera and other contagious diseases which attention to sanitary matters confers. I do not know whether any of the hon. members of the Council have had the sad experience of going through a severe experience of cholera; if so I am sure they will all agree with me in saying no sacrifice is too much, and no trouble too great to take if we can keep this dread enemy from our doors.
I will ask the Council to bear with me for a few moments while I read one or two extracts from some papers which were read at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association at Cardiff in 1885. There was an appalling epidemic of cholera raging at that time in Spain. In four days it had attacked 9,437 persons and it proved fatal in 3,633 cases. Cardiff itself had been attacked once or twice, and therefore there is a certain appropriateness in dealing with the subject on that occasion and in that town.
Dr. Pringle, Surgeon-Major, and late of the Sanitary Department of the Bengal Army, who had had some experience of great cholera epidemics in India, read the first paper. After giving his reasons for saying that cholera is imported and speaking of quarantine, he says :-
I am convinced that, if attention were more paid to local sanitation, with the view of preventing the disease from obtaining a footing, and not so entirely devoted to the efforts to keep it out by sanitary cordons and quarantine, we should hear less of those melancholy tales of panic and death Local sanitation therefore, both as regards the locality and its inhabitants, is the preventive measure against cholera of any practical value.
By sanitation with reference to the locality, I mean the systematic search for, and removal of, all those conditions, either local or personal, which tend to produce, by means of the air breathed, or water or food taken, derangement of the bowels producing diarrhoea, or the specific local condition interfering with the biliary secretion, which too frequently results in dysentery.
By sanitation locally, with regard to the inhabitants, I mean the allaying of that alarm which too often ends in panic, and which is the most fertile exciting cause of liability to a choleraic seizure. This should in reality be more easily attained than the sanitation of the locality, as it is entirely due to the idea that cholera is both infectious and contagious, when, in the strict sense of the term, it is most certainly neither.
Before I proceed further, I think it most necessary to point out clearly that local sanitation will fail to produce its full and characteristic beneficial results, if delayed till the epidemic is near at hand.
Unheeded warnings bring their own punishment, and Spain now suffers from the neglect of July, 1884. True, sanitation is now thought of and attempted, but too late, the pestilence is in their midst, has succeeded in securing a good footing, and has found a population ready, by the consequences of want of sanitation and pauperism, for its fatal grasp; it is thus we hear of the appalling mortality given by the correspondents of the Journal of this Association in Spain.
When the inhabitants of a locality see measures taken to secure a high state of sanitation, their confidence is secured, and their moral courage to successfully meet the pestilence is both roused and established.
The next paper is by Dr. Paine, who was Medical Officer of Health for Cardiff and who spoke from personal experience. Speaking of the anxiety that then existed in England as cholera was raging in France, he says:-
Even bold men grew grave, and asked, in anxious tones, how far we were prepared to cope with a foe which spread like a whirlwind and numbered its victims by thousands. The inquiry was not an unnatural one for those who have not had occasion to mark particularly the great strides in sanitation which the last thirty years have witnessed, and who do not know with any precision the strong bulwarks which these improvements constitute against inroads of
Page 34