On the effects of recent sanitary legislation on the health of the metropolis : and on our present urgent sanitary needs / by John Whitmore.

  • Whitmore, John.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the effects of recent sanitary legislation on the health of the metropolis : and on our present urgent sanitary needs / by John Whitmore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    and fever. In the first four years the annual sickness rate from these diseases was 4-7 per cent., in the second it was 6 9 per cent., and in the third 6-9 per cent. I am aware that these returns, derived as they are from a limited source, are not to be accepted as a correct indication of what may have been the sickness rate of London during the same periods ; but inasmuch as they have been obtained from a parish where, to the credit of the authorities, it may be said that sanitary improve- ments have been carried out with a degree of liberality and energy unsurpassed by any other parish in the metropolis, the fair infer- ence is that they are rather below than above the estimate. Amongst the annual death rates of London for the last thirty years, there are some that are unusually high; these are caused either by the fluctuations of seasons, or by the zymotic activity of diseases, or by both; but inasmuch as an increased mortality in one year is generally succeeded by a reduced mortality in the next, the decennial averages are not much affected by these causes. Looking, now, back to the facts revealed to us by the general death rates, the death rates of young children, and the sickness rates, we might under a momentary feeling of disapj)ointment jump to the conclusion that sanitary legislation has been a dead letter, and that it has done nothing towards the saving of human Kfe or the alleviation of human suffering. Such an opinion, however, would be very erroneous and opposed to facts, which a little con- sideration will enable us to realize. In the last twenty years the population of London has increased from 2,373,000 to 3,170,000, but there has been no corresponding increase in the superficial area over which that increase has been distributed. The result therefore is that many localities, especially those inhabited by the poorer classes, have year by year become more densely populated, and the reasonable inference would be that in such localities the death rate would become augmented. Such, however, is not the fact, and it may, I think, be attributed to sanitary improvements. From this, then, we may fairly assume that without the sanitary work of the last fifteen years the death rate of London would have been in- finitely higher than it now is ; but we may also assume that, had that work been more complete, had sanitary enactments been more comprehensive and more compulsory, the death rate would have been, spite of all opposing influences, much lower. That the death rate of the metropolis has not declined in theratic of the improvement in its sanitary condition is, I thiiik, maiuly