Page:The present and general condition of sanitary science.djvu/8

4 that death-rates in towns under the separate system of drainage have been reduced by one-half through the work of the sanitary engineer alone. It is no Utopia that the death-rate at Rugby, for example, which was one of the towns first treated by our first General Board of Health, was then twenty-four in a thousand, and is now only twelve. It is no Utopia that at Salisbury the old death-rate, which at the beginning of the century was as high as forty in a thousand, is now about sixteen; or that at Croydon and a number of other places, death-rates of twenty-four in a thousand now average fifteen. These reductions have been effected by the system of "circulation versus stagnation," which is yet to be made generally understood, to be by constant and direct supplies of water, by the removal of the fouled water through self-cleansing house-drains and self-cleansing sewers, and by the removal of the refuse—fresh and undecomposed, and unwasted—on to the land.

On the examination of incipient experiences, and on long and careful examination, the application of this system was proposed for the metropolis, but it was opposed by what is called "Vestralisation," and by strong interests in expensive works, in the House of Commons, by which the Government at a morning sitting were put in a minority. An opposite system was adopted, which has since been examined and condemned by Lord Bramwell's Commission as "a disgrace to the metropolis and to civilisation." Our measure was carefully examined by German sanitary engineers, who proposed it for application to Berlin. It has been applied there, though not yet so completely as I consider it might be, and it has recently been re-examined by a deputation from the French Government, and it is now adopted on that examination for the relief of the sanitary condition of Paris. I greatly lament the loss, by death, of M. Durand Claye, the ingénieur en chef of Paris, a firm sanitary disciple of mine, but I hope that loss may not imperil the economical execution of the work.

Various experiences in this country by these factors alone have established with such certainty that a contractor may contract with safety for the attainment of sanitary results, and by them the general death-rate may yet be reduced by ten in a thousand. Beyond the reduction of the annual death-rate from