The jubilee of sanitary science / being the annual address by Edwin Chadwick ... at the anniversary dinner of the Association of Public Sanitary Inspectors.

  • Edwin Chadwick
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The jubilee of sanitary science / being the annual address by Edwin Chadwick ... at the anniversary dinner of the Association of Public Sanitary Inspectors. 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.

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    realJy from very partial work during the Jubilee period. The life rate can only, in the present state of the census returns, be deduced from the mean ages of deaths, and the advance of tliese mean ages in six of the towns stated has been during the Jubilee period from 34 years six months to 39 years eigrht montlis, which would show the ];ossibility of the reduction of the death rate by 5 years, with, an accompanying augmentation of the life rate to the same extent. (Cheers.) It will be for each individual to estimate what the money value of five years' life is worth to him, in addition to the saving of rates, and the saving of the bui'den of insurance charges. The factors for effecting this work would be, a constant supply of pure water carried into every house or into every flat of the house; constant removal of all fouled water by the water closet and by the kitchen sinks through self-cleansing house drains; and the imme- diate removal of all dead matter from the house to the land outside the town by self-cleansing sewers. The cost of these factors (where the works were properly car- ried out) some years ago averaged threepence-half penny per house per week, or on the average of a population of five to each house, of one halfpenny per week per head of the population. The cost of labour has been increased since that time, but the prices of the chief material, the earthenware pipes, have been reduced by one half, so that the total cost of the works is now about the same. From works properly executed there would be no such deadly smells as have pervaded the Houses of Parliament, or as now pervade the public offices, nor any such smells as now pervade the streets, and are the subject of complaint along the whole sixteen miles of trunk-sewer of stagnant sewage. At the same time the estimateJ cost of the sickness, the loss of work, and the excessive deaths which the reduction of the death-rate in the metropolis by five in a thousand would remove—would not be less, on Dr. Farr's estimate, than three millions and a-half per annum on the four miUions one hundred and forty thousand of population of the inner ring of tlie metropolis.
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