Page:A brief history of the Hughli district.djvu/8

ii past, so that they may avoid a repitition of costly experiments which have failed. If this alone should prove to be the result of the publication of the Gazetteers, it will save far more than their cost by preventing much waste of time and money. Moreover, it will always be an advantage to have information of this kind in an accessible form, and it is besides desirable, as His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor has observed, in papers relating to the project, to take stock, as it were, of past work from time, to time. A perusal of Lieutenant-Colonel Crawford's summary of the very varied opinions held by men of distinction in their own day, on the causation, for example, of the Burd wan fever, and of the views of others on sanitary measures in the Hughli town and district, will show how cautiously our theories should be formed, and, further, how much more deliberate we ought to be in giving practical and, perhaps, expensive, and, even dangerous, as well as troublesome, effect to our deductions from them.

If about 1840, the instructions of Government on the suggestions of the late Sir J. Ranald Martin that medical histories of all important military charges should be prepared, had been carried out more extensively also in Civil Stations, and if such accounts had been amplified and kept up to date by succeeding officers we should have had an immense amount of information at our disposal; many disappointments and failures, would have been avoided; and, I may venture to add, much more progress would have been effected, for example, in sanitation, in the diminution of mortality in jails, and in the popularization and systematization of all forms of medical and charitable relief.