Sanitary progress : address of the President of Section A, Brighton Health Congress, Wednesday, December 14th, 1881 on the prevention of epidemics / by Edwin Chadwick.
- Chadwick, Edwin, 1800-1890.
- Date:
- 1882
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Sanitary progress : address of the President of Section A, Brighton Health Congress, Wednesday, December 14th, 1881 on the prevention of epidemics / by Edwin Chadwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
24/28 (page 22)
![Aoknow- U'dnment of tlie past service, for the imke of the future j)r(itection <if the popuhition. General conclusions for the pre- vention f the occur- t'Tice and of the spread of epidemics. mul had to be interred separate!}'. We may add to this tli(> ])ecuniary economy of the saving of force by the saving of the health and lives of the second army in the Crimea, acknow- ledged to have been achieved mainly by the specialists trained under our Board. Altogether we may, I submit, claim credit for the collective economies of the past for the sake of the future—now especially—in claiming as a source of economy, if properly conducted, the relief of the population from the pecuniary burdens, direct and indirect, now inflicted upon them by the continued retention of removable conditions of the ordinaiy as well as of the extraordinary epidemics. Experience has shown that all the principles of sanitation elaborated, and all the measures prepared on them for the relief of the Metropolis, Avill have yet to be applied for the reduction of the existing burdens, chiefly from the ordi- nary epidemics and diseases of the zymotic class, amount- ing to some twenty thousand of lives, and a burden of from one to two millions of money there annually. An aphor- ism of Burke has been held out to me as a warning, ' that those Avho would carry out great public principles must be proof against the most ftitiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults, and what is worse than all, the presumptuous judgments of the ignorant upon their desi<2:ns.' Much of this will be found to have been ex- eniplified in the early progress of sanitation in this country. Competent and impartial judgments admit and declare that the ignorance and apathy to the prevention of pain and misery to others, and the want of official energy to Avithstand the sinister interests that occasioned the discontinuance of the first General Board of Health, and the obstruction of its measures, have thrown back sanitary progress by a quarter of a century ; and that the just recognition of past public services, not to say atonement for their frustration, as well as an assured relative position of the service itself—is due and requisite for the attainment of further advances. I now beg to recapitulate the chief conclusions Avhich the facts in question appear to establish. That cases of small-pox, of typhus, and of others of the ordinary epidemics, occur in the greatest proportion, on com- mon conditions of foul air, from stagnant putrefaction, from bad house drainage, from sewers of deposit, from excrement- sodden sites, from filthy street surfaces, from impure water, and from overcrowding in foul houses. That the entire removal of such conditions by complete sanitation and by improved dwellings is the elfectual preventive](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22278060_0024.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
