DISCUSSION.

Mr. EDWARD JENKINS (London), as a member of the committee appointed by the Social Science Association and the British Medical Association to watch the passage of the Public Health Bill through Parliament, expressed a hope that the spirit and principles just enunciated by Mr. Michael were those in which the Association still believed, notwithstanding all the criticism aimed at them. The members of the Association had been termed doctrinaires, but at all events these were the principles to which they adhered, and to which they meant to adhere until they got them carried. The result of the inquiries instituted by members of that Association, among whom his friend Dr. Stewart took a prominent part, had shown how essential to the welfare of the country were the reform and consolidation of the laws, and uniformity and organization by which those laws were to be carried out. He agreed with Mr. Michael as to the constitution of the sanitary unit and the creation of an intervening sanitary power to interpose an obstacle between localization on the one hard, and indifference on the other. The distinction between urban and rural districts must hereafter lead to great confusion, but, nevertheless, it had been introduced into our legislation. He must enter a caveat against the more ambitious part of his learned friend's scheme respecting the creation of a Ministry of Health and Justice. The carrying out of such a proposal would, to a great extent, involve a reorganization of the Cabinet. If the Ministry of Health were to arrogate to itself any of the duties of the Minister of Justice, this would clash with the scheme propounded yesterday by the Attorney-General in favour of the creation of a separate Minister of Justice. Again, he thought the matter would involve a serious reconstruction of the Cabinet. Nevertheless the lines laid down by Mr. Michael were, in the main, impregnable. The way in which Her Majesty's Government were approaching the question was not calculated to bring about either a speedy or a happy solution of it. They ought to urge on the Government more strongly than ever the necessity for a reconstitution of the unit, for an intervention of the county power or of the district power, and then for the consolidation of all the statutes in the manner his learned friend had suggested; and, above all, that the central body should be invested with sufficient power to enable it to overlook and supervise the whole sanitary administration of the kingdom, and to exercise in time of danger such powers as would as far as possible keep us from danger.

Mr. CHRISTOPHER BULTEEL (Devonport) was of opinion that the relief of the poor and sanitary arrangements were two perfectly distinct things. It was quite necessary, right, and proper, that they should be united under one head, but he thought they ought to constitute two separate departments, and that throughout the country the board, which administered sanitary arrangements should be separate from that which administered relief. Then, in his opinion, all local bodies, as they now were, should be supervised by the Local Government Board in London, and the medical officers of health should register all diseases.

Dr. PEARSE (Plymouth) thought that the duties which at present devolved on rural boards, commissioners, magistrates, &c., ought to be concentrated in one quarter. Hitherto there had been a continual conflict between different authorities, but now, at the very moment when education was beginning to stir among the masses, splendid results were likely to follow from the consideration of all these questions in one great Act.

Dr. HARDWICKE (London) expressed his extreme satisfaction at the profoundness and practicability of all the suggestions contained in the paper. The Public Health Act was not workable in his judgment, and it would be necessary to revert to the system of sanitary organization sketched out by Mr. Michael. There would, however, be very many difficulties in the way of doing this. The first and chief thing they ought to attempt was to educate the House of Commons itself on matters concerning the sanitary condition of the country. There must be a thorough modification of the system of poor law administration. The step taken last session would, to some extent, lead to this; and he was glad to find that something was to be done in the way of properly training the officers and the large staff connected with poor law matters. As to the registration of diseases, nothing could be more absurd than the plan for confining it to the poor law sickness of the country.

In his district (Paddington), for example, the diseases which occurred among the poor had, comparatively speaking, no reference to the sanitary defects and nuisances in the neighbourhood. Nay, even with regard to contagious disease in some places, they represented a mere tithe of what ought to come under the cognizance of sanitary authorities. In his opinion, the compulsory registration of disease ought to be confined to zymotic diseases or preventive diseases.

Mr. SILLAR (Plymouth) said, Mr. Michael's comprehensive statement dealt with the details of the laws which should be made for the regulation of these great questions rather than with the principles on which a comprehensive measure should be based. There were two rival theories held by political economists-one that all human interests were antagonistic; and the other, which was ably argued by Bastiat, that all human interests were harmonious. Now the principle on which comprehensive measures could be based, entirely depended upon one of these two theories; because, if human interests were antagonistic all laws must be restrictive, but if, on the contrary, human interests were harmonious, the fewer laws there were the more room there would be for those harmonious interests to have full play. In his belief Bastiat was right. In one respect the body politic closely resembled the body personal. When in good health all functions were performed well and easily, but the restriction of one prevented the whole from working. If, however, he went fully into this subject too large a question would have to be embraced, so he would only allude to one point, namely, that where we found a sanitary law had been neglected, we could find out who was primarily responsible for looking after that law, and the reason why that person could not attend to it. Probably he would be found to be thoroughly engaged otherwise; and to go to first principles we must remove all difficulties, so that he might only be properly engaged. They found society divided into two classes-one which had too much to do, and the other which had not enough to do, and the latter invariably did the whole of the mischief. A medical officer of health must have only a fair amount of work to do, and we must discredit as much as possible any local board having borrowing powers, unless in a very great emergency, for if we gave them unlimited power so to do, there would be the greatest extravagance.

Dr. OXLAND (Compton, Plymouth) stated that whilst the water supply of Plymouth contained potash and the wells plenty of lime, waters differed in different localities, and therefore in any health Bill it was desirable that a medical officer should at all times have the power to call in the assistance of an analyst, so that together they might easily solve the cause of the prevalence of a particular disease. The milk supply of the neighbourhood was worse than the water, for not only was it largely adulterated with water, but what was worse still, the cowsheds were of the most disgusting character, and indeed it was wonderful that disease was not more prevalent. His own family had been strangely affected by the use of milk, and altogether there was a great necessity for more ready means for the examination of matters.

Mr. MICHAEL, in replying, regretted the hurried way in which the Public Health Act of last session was passed, and complained that the action taken by the Association had been disregarded by Parliament. Nothing of course could now be done until the legislation of the session of 1872 had been entirely swept from the Statute Book, and towards this he asked the Section to adopt the report of the Joint Committee on State Medicine of the British Medical and Social Science Association, 1872.*

This having been done

Dr. HARDWICKE proposed a resolution, asking the Council of the Association to take steps to give a wide publicity to Mr. Michael's paper.

The resolution was carried nem, dis.

See abstract, p. 374.

What Means can be Adopted to Prevent the Pollution of Rivers? By WILLIAM HOPE, V.C.

I

HAVE ventured to assume that I shall best effect the most practical good by confining my remarks to ordinary town sewage and refuse as usually met with. Indeed, this is the public question: the other is a private question. If a capitalist carries on, in an isolated position, an industry which involves the pollution of the nearest river, he does so with his eyes open, knowing that at any moment an injunction may be obtained from the Court of Chancery to stop the nuisance. There is no hardship in this. A man has no more right to pollute a river or the sea than to pollute the air, so that it is the duty of a capitalist, discharging from his works a polluting liquid, to consult a professional chemist as to the best remedy in his particular case, and not to look to such an Association as this to teach him any part of his process for making money. I would merely observe that, in considering the difficulties of any such private industrial establishment, it is well to remember the typical case of the alkali manufacturers in Lancashire. They were positively desolating the country for miles together, and when the Alkali Act was passed they made a fearful outcry, and declared that anything approaching to the Government standard of purity was unattainable, and that they would be all ruined, their workpeople thrown out of employment, the trade driven to foreign countries, consumers in other trades terribly inconvenienced, and so forth; yet no such results happened. Dr. Angus Smith taught them that to prevent nuisance was to save money, and they admit now that the Act was quite as beneficial to themselves as to the public.

But although I do not think that wealthy private manufacturers, who can well afford to pay for the advice of the first chemists in the country, can expect the limited time of this meeting to be taken up in considering the difficulties which, in some exceptional cases, may diminish their profits, I think the meeting might usefully pass a resolution requesting Government to introduce a clause in the continuation of their very incomplete Public Health Act, giving all "sanitary authorities" power to forbid the discharge into their sewers of any manufacturing refuse injurious to vegetation, because the presence of any such substances, in quantities sufficient to produce an appreciable effect, would very seriously increase the difficulties at present surrounding the sewage question, which most town authorities probably consider quite great enough already.

Leaving, then, the proprietors of private industrial undertakings to make money in any way they please, so long as they do nothing contrary to public policy, we may now proceed to consider how the unavoidable refuse, both solid and liquid, from aggregations of human habitations, can be prevented from polluting rivers.

* See Transactions, 1871, pp. 101-450.

Of course, there is "nothing like leather," and every man considers his own work and his own hobby the most important of the day; but I believe I am within the region of fact in saying that this is, in sober truth, the greatest social question of the day ; greater even than education, or drunkenness, or the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed, for surely from no point of view, physical, moral, or religious, can it be of any use teaching pauper children the three R's, or limiting the hours during which the working man may get drunk, or forcing us periodically to consign our Dissenting friends to eternal perdition, if we are all to die of enteric fever. But it is curious to observe the manner in which this question is shirked by those who ought to discuss it, and discussed by those who know nothing about it. The very first thing which the Royal Sanitary Commission did when they were appointed, was to pass a formal resolution that they would shirk this all-important sanitary" question. Successive Home Secretaries have for many years shirked it. One of them said to a friend of mine that he'd be hanged if he would bring down all the vestries on the top of him." While Mr. Bruce, finding that the public were beginning to think that he had "considered" the question long enough, and ought at length to do something, succeeded, with great skill and address, not only in shirking it for the moment, but in actually abolishing it for ever, so far as the Home Office is concerned, by getting it erected into a new department of State, with a special sewage minister. Then at last did town councillors and local boards rub their hands, and look forward to the day of their deliverance from the Frankenstein of the Public Health Act of 1848. Little, however, did they understand the art of government by a large majority. Why the very first thing that the right honourable the new sewage minister did was to shirk the sewage question.

66

But a psychological study of the question has satisfied me that sewage contains moral as well as material poison, for not only do advocates of different systems or suggestions for dealing with sewage attack each other with a rancour and asperity formerly restricted to polemics, but men who are in all other matters sober-minded and rational, seem, in the consideration of this question, to lose all power of sifting and weighing evidence, to reject all scientific authority, to believe that no one who is not an ignorant, unknown quack, can be competent to guide public opinion in this matter; and, above all, to labour under an imperious craving for something new and startling, rarely witnessed except among some of the ladies who attend the "good-gracious sections" of the British Association. That in these days, and in the case of such a matter-of-fact subject, educated gentlemen should experience an inclination to believe in empirical nostrums, rather than to learn from men of science what are the true facts and possibilities, is indeed remarkable; but it may perhaps be explained, to some extent, by the complex character of the sewage question. Its successful solution requires the co-operation of the chemist, the engineer, the physician, the physiologist, and the agri

culturist; but though chemistry may be said to possess the key to its solution, yet the plainest and most unquestioned facts in chemistry are frequently set at naught by persons who assume to advise municipal authorities in a matter of such moment. Thus we find one set

of men advocating some nostrum or other for abstracting from the sewage all its ammonia; another set of men contending that land to which sewage is applied by irrigation should not be drained; yet every chemist in Europe, with any reputation to lose, would tell the first set that they were running after a will-o'-the-wisp, while every large and successful tenant-farmer would join the chemists in telling the others that if they apply liquid to the land, equivalent to several feet of additional rainfall, they cannot get vigorous crops unless they drain, except in the case of land with a quite unusual natural drainage. If ever there was a case in which a co-ordination of the different sciences bearing on the question was necessary, it is just this sewage question, and yet there never perhaps was a case in which people were so prone to take a narrow, one-sided view.

On the present occasion, the necessarily limited time at our dis posal will not allow me to do more than pass in review very briefly the principal systems and processes before the public, but I will endeavour to do so in such a way as not to lose sight of any points of capital importance.

The means proposed for preventing the pollution of rivers by sewage may be divided into two broad, general divisions, namely, those which profess to deal with part only of the sewage, and those which profess to deal with the whole.

Under the first head come Mr. Moule's earth-closet, the Goux system, Mr. Stamford's system, and a host of others. These are all, as pointed out by my friend and colleague, Professor Corfield, systems of conservation, when compared with the water-carriage system, which is a system as nearly as possible automatic, of removal, and they all profess to deodorize, or, as their advocates term it, "disinfect," the solid fecal matter, and to absorb the small quantity of liquid which can be simultaneously collected; but supposing that they really accomplished all they are intended to effect, the sewage question would still be as far from solution as ever, for the part of the total refuse which they profess to deal with is only about a half per cent. of the whole. I speak advisedly, and from actual measurement. However, some of these systems, especially the Goux system, which substitutes ashes for earth, would probably be found exceedingly dangerous in times of epidemics, as, though the ashes may, to a certain extent, deodorize, it is next to impossible that they can "disinfect." Consequently, any such system might do actual mischief by encouraging persons to keep infectious matter inside houses, in the belief that it had been disinfected because it had been deodorized. But this opens up too large a physiological question to be discussed on the present occasion. I would merely beg you to remember that it is not the gas, however offensive or whatever its origin, which spreads infectious