Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Preventive medicine. 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.
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![these.it is necessary that everything possible should be done for the pro- motion and maintenance of the national health. Such, then, is to be your work ; let me say our work, for though I cannot further contribute to the proceedings of the Congress, I shall watch them -with much, interest, and shall always strive to promote whatever may be her,e plainly shown to be useful for the public health. (Loud cheers.) Replies to this address of welcome were then delivered by several foreign delegates. The first was in French by Dr. Brouardel, Dean of Faculty of IMedicine of Paris. He said :— In the name of the French members of the Congress of Hygiene and Demography I offer our respectful homage to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. We pray that he will convey to Her Majesty the Queen of England the expression of our most heartfelt thanks. Her Majesty has graciously deigned to accord to this Congress her Royal patronage, and we hope that the work achieved by it will justify this mark of her gracious approbation. We are aware that in England public opinion is ready to second our efforts; we have a sure guarantee of this in the history of the last half-century.- In the year 1837, the year of the coronation of Her Gracious Majesty, appeared the Act which rendered obligatory the registration of deaths. This Act inaugurated the era of administrative reforms concerning the public health which our valued colleague of the Local Government Board has rightly called “ the Victorian era.” This Act did not long remain alone. Under the impulse given by two of your most illustrious patriots. William Farr and Edwin Chadwick, you have organised a system of registration of the causes of diseases and of deaths. Certain impoidant cities, b(ffore the law made it obligatory, obtained supplies of water beyond all' suspicion of pollution, and ado])ted systems of removal of foul water and waste matters. In these cities, whose action cannot be too much praised, the sickness and death rates diminished rapidly ; this furnished the necessary proof—it was time for reform. Twenty years ago the Local Government Board was established, and in 1875 had submitted to Parliament a Bill for the protection of the public health. During its discussion in Parliament one of your greatest Ministers (Disraeli) pro- nounced in the House of Commons these memorable words, which should be repeated in all eountries and in all Parliaments :—“ The public health “ is the foundation on which repose the happiness of the people and the “ power of a country. The eare of the public health is the first duty of a “ statesman.” Since this, each year you have made fresh improvements in your sanitary laws; if in your eyes they are not perfect, in the eyes of the nations who surround you they are an ideal towards which all their most ardent aspirations tend. It is your example they invoke when they claim from the public authorities the powers necessary to oppose epidemics, to combat the scourges which decimate their popula- tions. You have taken the first rank in the art of formulating laws for the protection of health; this is not all that you have done in the domain of hygiene. Among the diseases which one can properly term pestilential, there are, thanks to the work of the hygienists of all countries, certain ones which from the present time may be considered as preventible—](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28045439_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
