Sanitary science : as applied to the health construction of houses in town and country / Robert Scott Burn.

  • Robert Scott Burn
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sanitary science : as applied to the health construction of houses in town and country / Robert Scott Burn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    CITY CONTEASTS. and wilfully overlook the evils surrounding them, or who will not believe that they exist at all, or if existing they are not so bad as they are said to be. To such, a few facts and general consideration connected with the sub- ject may be of use. Could one with somewhat of Asmodean power, not unroof the houses, but skim over the streets of any of our large cities, what strange contrasts would he behold ! Here, wide, well swept streets, lined on either side with large, well-built mansions ; or shops, filled with everything that can tempt the luxurious or re- fined, or minister to the utilities of life ; and but a stone's throw off, a narrow, noisome street, heaped up here and there with garbage foul, offensive to sight and smell Stately warehouses containing wealth that would have ransomed kings long ago, overlooking hovels sheltering, not half covering, the wretchedness of the poorest of the poor; hospitals looking out upon the lazar houses from which come the occupants of their wards; churches crushing in where the sound of praise and the song to heaven mingles with fierce curses of men and the shrieks of women and children; the windows of a Bible warehouse in a broad street looking out upon a brothel; a police-office fronting a flash house,—these and a hundred other contrasts as strange and striking, would make up the mingled mass which that city is. Which of our cities can be said to be without its plague spots 1 Which of our towns with- out its death shadows ] Walk the streets of London, and if your guide is a vain man, prompt only to show you in his vanity the evidence of the wealth and power of the world's capital, he will lead you through stately squares and crescents, but he will pass by the courts and alleys, and the narrow streets, of the condition of which, the following is but too true a description : The streets, courts, alleys, and houses, in which fever