done, which suggests the strong conviction to
which we have before referred, that even
already some part of the diminution in the
rate of our mortality is due to recent
exertion for the removal of a few causes of
disease—-faint as it is in comparison with
the great mass of evil to be overcome. In
one parish alone (Whitechapel) thirteen
hundred cesspools have been abolished, and
nearly four hundred, for which sewerage
could not be substituted, have been cleansed.

In the same parish, more than three hundred
dwellings have been lime-whited and
cleaned; as many yards and cellars have
been paved; improvement has been made
in forty slaughter-houses; dust-bins have
been built, water supply has been amended in
some houses, and connected with soil-pans in
seven hundred and fifty. This kind of
activity, various in degree, is everywhere
shown; out of these reports we might fill
two or three columns with such local records
of work done. A large proportion of it is
the result of the activity of the inspectors of
nuisances. The business of the officer of
health is to supply in each district the helping
mind, and we have not read our heap of
reports without acquiring a very high respect
for the intelligence of the body of gentlemen
by whom they have been furnished. They
vary, of course, very much in ability, but they
are all written in earnest. Except one or two
instances of subservience to vestries, they
take a liberal, high-minded tone; are firm in
pursuit of their object, but make few
extravagant demands; and if they now and then
misread a fact into theory, they far more than
compensate for the occasional error by the
frequency and force of their warnings against
generalisation from a few facts, or from many
facts without taking incidental circumstances
into consideration.

Thus Dr. Druitt tells the inhabitants of
Saint George's, Hanover Square, that they
must look beyond dry tables of mortality to
see that half the parish is like a vast hotel,
with shifting population. He learns from
the bakers, that there is from twice and
a-half to four times as much bread eaten
there in June as in September. Many people,
if sick, go into the country. Into certain
streets, many sick people come as lodgers,
attracted by the excellence of the medical and
surgical advice to be had in the parish, so that,
apart from that consideration, we might
suppose, from tables, that those streets were
particularly fatal to persons in the prime of
life. Again, the immunity from sickness and
death among the rich is made to appear
greater than it is, because, in the population
of their houses, are reckoned the domestic
servants, who leave, if unhealthy, go away to
their friends in the alleys to be ill; and who,
having given their lives to swell the life-
table of the rich, add their deaths to the
death-tables of the poor.

The Medical Officers of Health in London,
very soon after their appointment, formed
themselves into an Association, in order that
since their office was new, its duty ill-defined,
and its usefulness very dependent upon their
all collecting and arranging facts upon a
common system, they might work
harmoniously "for mutual assistance and
information, and for the advancement of medical
science." The good spirit which produced
such an association has maintained it now
for fifteen months, not only as a bond of union
among fellow-workers, but as a means of
making work effective for the public service.

We have shown how the reports before us
teach the need of sanitary work in London,
and that they tell something of work done. It
remains for us to refer to the curious facts and
valuable suggestions in which they abound.

As to particular diseases, there are strange
things to be learnt. Why is consumption
the disease most fatal at Mile-end, as Mr.
Freeman shows us that it is; and why has
Dr. Buchanan to report that the great feeder
of the grave is measle in Saint Giles's? The
last fact reminds us of a sentence in Mr.
Wilkinson's report for the Lewisham district.
"Closely surrounding a courtyard, in which
are placed a stable, slaughter-house, and dung-
heap, draining into a well (which was, until
lately, used for drinking) there have been
sixteen or seventeen severe cases of measles."

In Mr. Pittard's district of Saint George's-
in-the-East, there are the London Docks,
and into these docks, clearly and easily
preventible as the disease is, "hardly a
month passes without the coming of a ship
with frightful sickness and death on board
from scurvy." In one case that came under
Mr. Pittard's notice, the captain perfectly
well knew by what means to prevent scurvy,
"and, after the first culpable neglect in leaving
India without them—- when scurvy was
spreading in the ship, and one man had
already died of it—-they lay to at the Azores,
where oranges (a well-known preventive)
were selling at threepence the dozen, and the
captain purchased some for his own use, of
which he subsequently sold a few to the sick
men at two-pence a-piece. The outlay of a
pound or two would have enabled him to put
his crew in perfect health; but he only took
care of himself. Two more men died before
the ship reached England, and the survivors
contrasted with the captain, who was hale
and hearty, it was painful to see. The law,
as it now stands, I fear, cannot be brought
directly to bear on such a case. I had no
vent for my indignation, but to upbraid this
captain, in no measured terms, on his own
deck, in the presence of the men he had so
foully wronged."

Among the suggestions scattered about
these reports, are some for the establishment
of public playgrounds; some, tending to
enforce the fact, that the pulling down of
here and there a house, when to do so would
make an open thoroughfare of a blind alley,