Page:On the Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom.djvu/44

38 the Commissioners state (at pages 53 and 55) as their conclusions—

"That in order to prevent the pollution and legally control the management of rivers, their basins or watersheds must be placed under supervision, irrespective of any arbitrary divisions of county, parish, township, parliamentary, municipal, or Local Government Act boundaries, or indeed of any artificially established division,"

"That the question of profit and loss in abating nuisances and in preventing the pollution of the atmosphere, running waters, or sea shore, by town and house sewage, or by working mines and carrying on trades and manufactures, ought not to be too rigidly taken into account,"

"That the prohibition against the casting in of solids may at once be general without any exception."

"That a stronger power than has hitherto been available must be brought to bear if the present abuse and pollution of streams is to be arrested, and Government supervision and inspection must enforce the action of local authorities."

"That our experience of the weakness inherent in unaided and uncontrolled local authorities convinces us that a central board appointed by a State department is necessary to the efficient protection of running waters."

From the Medical Times and Gazette of 28th September and 23rd November, 1867, with extracts from Mr. Simon's Annual Report to the Privy Council on the Public Health, for 1867:—

"A reduction of typhoid fever is undoubtedly shown coincident with sanitary improvements. 'Though not with absolute constancy, drying of the soil of a town and reduction in the crowding of houses have been followed by reduction of fever. Much more important appears to be the substitution of an ample supply of good water for a scanty and impure supply.'"

Mr. Simon insists with the utmost force upon the absolute relation of cholera in England to faults of drainage and water supply:—

"It cannot be too distinctly understood," he says,