Three reports relating to the Hastings water : with an appendix of letters, &c. / ordered to be printed by the Hastings Local Board of Health.

  • Hastings (England). Local Board of Health.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Three reports relating to the Hastings water : with an appendix of letters, &c. / ordered to be printed by the Hastings Local Board of Health. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/58 (page 37)
    No. 35. Letter from Dr. Garrett to the Mayor of Hastings. March 1st, 1859. Dear Sir, I wish pow to conclude this correspondence, so that you may complete its publication. After writing you my letter of Dec. 7th, 1858, I received a visit from the Turncock,* as the only person the Water Committee could depute to confer with me respecting this most im¬ portant affair. As the salubrity of particular dwellings was concerned in the subject, I at once declined placing such information in his hands, and in which he concurred ; hut I sent word by him to the Water Committee, that, if any one of their body would call upon me, 1 would shew him the specimens of water I had analyzed, tell him where I had obtained them, and give every information in my power. This offer, as you know, was never accepted.-f Is it decent or right that in asserting a great principle I should be driven to stigmatize certain houses only ? Had my offer been accepted, the truth must have come out. Here was their dodge. I assert that the leaden tanks are eaten away rapidly. Who eats them ? The water, clearly. Will any honest man, then, condemn me for 'privately calling the attention of the Water Committee to such a terrible circumstance ? Do not all these proceedings bear a construction of an advocacy of leaden tanks and filthy water, as well as of a medical cabal against a successful brother? Mark me, as sure as the God of truth and justice is evidenced in a righteous cause, this cabal will fall back upon those who seek to persecute me. No, Sir ; there is too much of the medical influence at work. A surgeon in this town declared that “ now we have got our Don of a Doctor, and we will drive him out of Hastings.” * [The Manager of the Waterworks,—the same person who was deputed to confer with the Committee of the Medico-Chirurgical Society on the same subject.] f [It will be observed that this was before the matter was brought before the Society.]