Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Health lectures for the people. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![the tramways carried 20Q,000 people fewer thau usual. The pecuniary expenses themselves cannot be estimated. The amount of misery and suffering is beyond all estimate. In connection with the history of the smallpox epidemic in Sheffield it is speci- ally worthy of note that at the time of the epidemic, health societies or associations were founded by the people of Sheffield, —societies for the conservation of their health, and Dr Barry re- ports ^that much good was done by these societies, and that they exerted a very important influence in checking the epidemic. Assurance societies were formed, the infectious sick were separated from the healthy, and during their separation they were supported out of the funds provided by the insurance fund. 33,000 mem- bers joined these associations and spent £5,300 during the epidemic. It is worthy also of note that in one of the largest firms in Sheffield the fund has been made permanent. These facts are surely sufficient to show that from the money point of view the expense of the prevention of disease is a mere flea-bite to the expense of sickness. The total expenses of the Health Committee last year in this town were £9,400. This looks a com- paratively large sum, but it is a mere nothing to the incalculable good that is done by the committee. Increase its officers tenfold, and the money thus spent will be returned over and over again with compound interest to the inhabitants. It was with extreme regret that I observed the other day that the Lord Provost's Com- mittee had dropped all the sanitary clauses in the proposed iPraids Bill. It is the duty of the Health Society to strengthen the hands of sanitary reformers in the Council, and to do all they can as individuals to make sanitation a crucial question at the municipal elections, and to see that the sanitary clauses in any future Bills are not dropped because of a fear that they will be opposed and the Bill lost. There is one point in the ]Prospectus of our Society which has not received, in my opinion, sufficient attention—the redelivery of the Society's lectures in lectures in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. THE COMPULSORY NOTIFICATION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES. With the great facilities for travelling the whole of this country has become so to speak, one large town. From the railway re-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21057631_0129.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
