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832 complaints were received as to the offensive smells arising from sewer ventilators, the evident impression being that these gratings were expected to emit vapour with a fragrant bouquet and that the Public Health Committee were responsible for the disappointment." Such sarcasm is altogether out of place. Every one knows that sewer-air must find an outlet somewhere and that ventilating shafts would be an improvement on the present street traps, but what is wrong with these Belfast drains that they require in places constantly to be cleaned out and that after heavy rains it is noticed that the health of the population shows a -general improvement? Surely it is evident that they allow a great accumulation of filth which is not properly removed. Public opinion is awakening in Belfast; the articles of the ’Special Sanitary Commissioner in THE LANCET are being Teprinted in the public press of the city and are having a most educating effect ; and as an evidence of the present tone of public opinion the following from a Belfast morning paper of Sept. 16th may be quoted :- The Public Health Committee will have to go far beyond ingenious suggestions that some typhoid cases are reported twice, recommenda- i, tions for the registration of pigstyes, or sarcastic hits at various ’, complainants. Few will have the hardihood to deny that the health I of the city has been most unsatisfactory or that the citizens have in ’, great degree been reaping to their sorrow what in the past successive town or city councils, improvement committees, or public health committees have sown. It is certainly no pleasure to us to have to ’, repeat this-quite the reverse. We should be sincerely sorry to sound an unnecessary alarmist note or to give countenance to any exaggeration. ’, Nothing could be further from our wishes than any attempt to blacken the reputation of the city," as an eminent corporator put it at a recent meeting of the City Council. But the methods of the ostrich are, to say the least, of very doubtful wisdom. The reputation of the city is what it was inevitably made by those who in the past permitted the jerry- builder to work his wicked will, who winked at the erection of houses upon vile, filth-sodden, filling-up stuff-of houses to the number of so many thousands without back passages, and with the disgusting and dangerous system of dry privies. The sanitary sins of the past have been finding us out, but unhappily the innocent suffer for the guilty. It is the duty of the City Council and the committees concerned, instead of attempting to minimise the gravity of the situation, to see that these sins and their evil consequences are not perpetuated. They will have their hands more than full inside the city itself, while they will have to very seriously consider the system under which the lough at our doors, so to speak, has been turned from a picturesque expanse of water into "a stinking cesspool." Beginning with themselves, they will have to deal with a more than Draconian severity with all offenders against sanitary laws, making the interests of the public health, not those of any individual, the sole basis of their - action. And they will have to see that while the city is so far as possible cleared of the grossest dangers its filth is not merely swept over the threshold to lie and fester and breed disease on the shores of the lough. This may seem indefinite, but the evils have been often denned and the remedies and palliatives often indicated. They will ’cost money and labour, but the price is nothing in proportion to the good to be gained-improved health for the citizens and a decent sanitary reputation for the city which will not be liable to suffer at every breath of plain and honest criticism. The City Corporation will meet on Oct. 1st, when it is expected there will be a very lively discussion on the typhoid fever epidemic. It would be as well if the members of that body who feel that the Public Health Department is totally incompetent to deal with the present deplorable sanitary condition of Belfast were to suggest calling in an extern authority such as Dr. Russell, medical officer of health of Glasgow, Sir Richard Thorne, medical officer of the English Local Government Board, or Dr. Niven, medical officer of health of Manchester, to advise what is best to be done so as to remedy the present sadly disgraceful sanitary -state of that city. _______ Public Health and Poor Law. LOCAL GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT. .REPORTS OF INSPECTORS OF THE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD. Report upon the Sanitary Conditions of the Urban District of Alnwick and upon Housing of the Working Classes therein, by Dr. G. S. BUCHANAN.1- The County Council of Northumberland in December of last year made repre- sentations to the Local Government Board as to certain unwholesome conditions which had been discovered in Alnwick by Dr. Hembrough, the county medical officer of health. The local medical officer of health shared Dr. Hembrough’s views, but the district council took no adequate 1 London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, East Harding-street ; Edinburgh: John Menzies and Co. ; Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, and Co. Price 3d. action. me ijocai Government Board tnereiore sent aown Dr. G. S. Buchanan, who has recently, through this Board, presented the public with a very detailed account of the shortcomings, ql1â sanitation, of the Alnwick District Council. As long ago as 1852-54 Alnwick was sewered, but in spite of this no diminution in the general mortality rate took place and the phthisis rate remained inordinately high. This fact seems to have disheartened the sanitary authority, and Dr. Buchanan reports that their later administration has been " conspicuously lax." It would appear, indeed, that the local authority have throughout either been devoid of backbone or, what really comes to the same thing, have had a backbone consisting of those interested in insanitary property who neglected to take proper action when unwholesome con- ditions were brought to their notice. The late Mr. Spear, who inspected this district in 1885, clearly diagnosed the condition from which the sanitary authority suffered when he wrote: ’’ Wherever individual interests have to be opposed, or seemingly opposed, sanitary administration has been paralysed." Evidently, too, Dr. Buchanan found the same conditions obtaining at the date of his recent visit, and in spite of a sewerage system, a public water-supply, and an isolation hospital we find that the poorer classes are shamefully housed and that a large proportion of the dwellings of the town are to be found huddled together on small areas at the back of the main thoroughfares. Dr. Buchanan paints a graphic picture of the manner in which this overcrowding of houses upon areas was gradually brought about. He tells us how the long strip of garden behind the house facing the main thoroughfares was covered by the operations of the jerry builder of former days and how through the ground floor of the front house the passage was knocked which now gives entrance to the alley or court in which are the overcrowded and dilapidated dwellings which he condemns so strongly. Time after time has the attention of the sanitary authority been drawn by the medical officer of health to this crowding of houses upon areas, and as often has the appeal for remedy been passed over, if not in silence at least without adequate action. As instances of extreme overcrowding Dr. Buchanan mentions a single room of barely 1000 cubic feet capacity inhabited by a family of eight, and a six-roomed house sub-let in tene- ments which was said to be occupied by thirty-one persons. It is, however, some consolation to find towards the end of the report before us that in January last a " Town Improvement Committee was appointed who really seem bent on putting an end to the state of ’affairs revealed in turn by the late Sir George Buchanan, by the late Mr. Spear, by successive medical officers of health of Alnwick, by Dr. Hembrough, and now, let us hope finally, by Sir George Buchanan’s son. Many of the dwellings here in ques- tion are, it appears, beyond remedy and comprehensive action under the Housing of the Working Classes Act seems the only solution of the difficulty. Dr. Buchanan has, however, mapped out the " insanitary areas " for the district council and told them of the death-rates, &c. He has, indeed, done everything but find the money, and even in this direction we may be sure that he will influence the Local Government Board to deal kindly with the authority in the matter of loans. VITAL STATISTICS. HEALTH OF ENGLISH TOWNS. IN thirty-three of the largest English towns 6504 births and 5165 deaths were registered during the week ending Sept. 17th. The annual rate of mortality in these towns, which had increased in the nine preceding weeks from 14’7 to 24’6 per 1000, declined last week to 24’0. In London the rate was 21’2 per 1000, while it averaged 25’9 in the thirty-two provincial towns. The lowest death-rates in these towns were 15’1 in West Ham, 15’8 in Swansea, 16’3 in Croydon, and 16’5 in Portsmouth; the highest rates were 34-8 in Salford, 37-0 in Bolton, 37-2 in Gateshead, and 40 6 in Sunderland. The 5165 deaths in these towns included 1545 which were referred to the principal zymotic diseases, against 1646 and 1578 in the two preceding weeks ; of these, 1315 resulted from diarrhoea, 70 from diphtheria, 67 from whooping-cough, 43 from "fever" (principally enteric), 28 from measles, 22 from scarlet fever, and not one from small-pois. The lowest
