Vaccination or sanitation? / by John C. McVail.

  • John McVail
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vaccination or sanitation? / by John C. McVail. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

    5/20 page 3
    floors high, with here and there an opening for a pool of water, from which there is no drain, and in which all the nuisances of the neighbourhood are deposited in endless succession, to float and putrefy and waste away in noxious gases. Let him look as he goes along into the cellars which open into this lane, and he will probably find lodged in alternate habitations, which are no way distinguished in their exterior, and very little by the furniture which is within them, pigs, cows, and human beings, which can scarcely be recognised till brought to the light or till the eyes of the visitant get accustomed to the smoke and gloom of the cellar in which they live. I have been to-day in several dens of this kind, where I did not see persons lying on the floor near me till Mr. Angus, whom a previous visit had taught where to find them, inquired after their health. I was in one closet, measuring twelve feet by less than five, on the floor of which he told me six persons had lain, affected with fever, within these two days, and where I saw the seventh inhabitant now confined. We found in one lodging-house, fifteen feet long by nine feet from the front of the beds to the opposite wall, that fifteen persons were sometimes accommodated ; and when we expressed horror at the situa- tion in which they were placed, the woman of the house, somewhat offended and, I beLeve, a little alarmed lest we should cause some enquiry to be made by the police, said, in support of the character of her establishment, that each family was provided with a bed, and that she very seldom had anybody lying on the floor. I shall only mention one other instance of misery. In a lodging-house, consisting of two rooms, separated by boards, the first thirteen feet by eleven, the other fifteen by eight, twenty-three of the lowest class of Irish were lately lodged. To-day, there are fourteen, of whom two are confined with fever, three are convalescent, and one only has hitherto escaped. There are only three beds in this house (denominated—with that facetiousness which enables an Irishman to joke with his own misery— flea barracks), one of ihem in a press half-way up the wall, the others wooden frames, on which are laid some shavings of wood, scantily covered with dirty rags. Most of the patients were lying on the floor. A man, two sons, and an adult daughter were lying side by side on the floor of the first room, their beddmg of the same materials with the others, and the boys being destitute of shirts. Could imagination feign a combination of circumstances more horribly conducive to disease and immorality ? Nineteen years later (in 1837), there is a report on the same subject by Dr. Cowan, Professor of
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image