success has been in reducing the mortality from infectious fevers. It would seem wise, therefore, in view of our past experience, that whatever change is made should be on the principles and in the direction of those Acts. Another statement should be made. Their success has been continuous and progressive, greater results being achieved year by year. One cause for this result is no doubt to be found in the facts that they were openly discussed in Parliament, and that their provisions were felt to be so wise, and so moderate, as to be capable of loyal acceptance both by the medical profession and the public. The legislation of the immediate future might, therefore, well consist of the rectification of obvious anomalies which experience has shewn to interfere with their satisfactory working; and secondly, of such a cautious extension of principles as public opinion is prepared for, and as in the nature of things is likely to do the greatest good with the least counteracting harm. Of those anomalies, some are more and others less easily removable. The first might probably be safely rectified at once; the second only by a slower process. An obvious example of the first class is the arbitrary division of the country into urban and rural sanitary districts, the rural districts having no power to make by-laws as to the construction of buildings, etc., a frequent result being that large factories are erected just beyond the boundaries of boroughs, and that the houses of workpeople, forming sometimes quite a village or town near them, are, in the absence of any control, often constructed with a total disregard to sanitary requirements.

To proceed. The highest aim of a sanitary law should be to create conditions inconsistent with disease, that is to prevent disease from occurring; its second, and lower one, to prevent it from spreading when it has occurred. These two aims should always be kept distinct. Is there a sufficiency of

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well ascertained fact as to the causation of many diseases to serve as the basis of further positive enactments? Three essentials, it has been well remarked, must always be observed, viz., certainty as to the cause of the disease, efficiency of the suggested remedy, and certainty that this remedy will not introduce greater evils than it proposes to The following facts will probably receive universal assent: The death-rate of towns is always lowered by the speedy removal of excremental and other refuse from houses. It is always lowered in proportion to the diminution of overcrowding, and, where this is completely done away with, typhus-fever is unknown. Special diseases, as diphtheria, typhoid-fever, and cholera, are most frequently caused by drainage-defects, or the pollution of potable waters. Rheumatism, and probably phthisis, are favoured, if not caused, by damp sub-soils. To secure good drainage, speedy refuse removal, abundant air space, dry sub-soil, and pure water, will, therefore, be to prevent much disease from arising.

The need of further legislation is proved by the following facts-Six per cent. of good London houses have their drains completely closed, all the sewage soaking into the soil, and at least 30 per cent. show considerable leakage of sewer-gas through faulty pipes; a row of large houses within four miles of Charing Cross, of which some had been occupied several times, were found never to have been connected with the sewers; in only one out of two hundred houses examined by the smoke-test in Glasgow was there no escape of the smoke through defects in pipes. Of 678 houses inspected, some three or four years ago, in Oxford, preparatory to certificates being granted for the lodgment of undergraduates, only twenty-one were deemed sanitarily sound. What is true of London, Glasgow, and Oxford, is true of this and other towns. And to shew that improvement of the dwellings is really followed by improvement of

health, it is only necessary to refer to our army, our prisons, and to the Industrial Dwellings Companies' houses. Before the Crimean war, the army of every age had a death-rate of more than double that of a similar male population of England and Wales. A Royal Commission was appointed and reported; legislation was framed for improved barracks, and now the chances of the soldier's life are better than those of civilians. In their ordinary dwellings in large towns, the death-rate of the working classes is from twenty-eight to thirty per thousand. In the Peabody and other Industrial dwellings in London, and in corresponding ones in Newcastle, it averages about sixteen, notwithstanding that the birth-rate is very high. In view of these facts, would it be a harsh extension of the law to make the adoption of such provisions as those of the model by-laws as to new buildings compulsory, and to supplement them by one requiring official examination and certification before tenancy could be commenced? But in London about 70,000 houses are said to be built annually. Could these be efficiently surveyed? Here local experience gives a reply. West Ham declined to adopt the model by-laws, because, on the one hand, their staff was insufficient to see that they were observed; and, on the other, the rates were too high to admit of their being increased by the six additional officers required, in order that a daily visit should be paid to each of the two hundred houses that were being commenced every month. But it was determined to levy a charge of one guinea on the builder-not much in addition to the original outlay-and the difficulty was solved. Two thousand four hundred guineas a year will pay for the six officers, and the owner will have a certificate that the house was sanatorily sound when it left the builder's hands. Other places adopt this plan; and some, as St. Mary Abbots, Kensington, grant a written report by their surveyor on any house on payment of a small fee. Generally,

however, any but first tenants must, on the principle of caveat emptor, require written assurance from their landlord, an arrangement with which public health law can, of course, have no concern.

Another remark suggests itself here. There is overwhelming evidence that the work of the plumber, and more especially that of the drain-setter, is often wilfully, wickedly defective. It is said that for the latter kind of work the lowest class of workman is employed. Much of the evidence of the plumbers' and drain-setters' mistakes, is, like the mistakes of the doctors, as their enemies allege, hidden away several feet under ground. But there is at least this security in the case of the latter body of men, that before they commence practising they must have a certificate from some competent authority that they have proved themselves generally efficient in their knowledge of the methods of curing disease. The other class, however, whose want of skill or want of conscience, not only may, but usually does, often cause it, are required to give no proof of their qualification before they practise. In view of the terrible results which the last few years have witnessed of defective plumbing and defective drain construction, would it be a harsh extension of public health law if plumbers were required to give practical proof of their efficiency before they could enter into business?* Birmingham and Liverpool license plumbers,

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They are absolutely impartial in the distribution of their bad-workmanship, peasant, peer and prince being treated with the like indifference. In a discussion held nearly four years ago at the Society of Arts, and reported in the Sanitary Record of Feb. 15th, 1883, Mr. Rogers Field is reported to have said, that out of about a thousand houses which he had examined only three were sound. Mr. E. Robins remarked, that he had never known a stoneware pipe stand the water. Stoneware pipes required the greatest care in laying, and yet the worst labourers were employed for this purpose. While a third speaker stated, that he had seen drains taken up at Sandringham House in which he could lay his hand, and one at Eastwell Park which for eighteen inches was choked with solid sewage matter, though supposed to have been put into a thoroughly satisfactory condition less than eight years previously.

but something more than this is necessary. The bad workmen must be excluded as well as the good ones encouraged.

In recognition of the evils arising from damp sub-soil, and from the suction into the house of ground-air, infected perhaps by soakage from a leaking drain, the Local Government Board by its tenth by-law as to new streets and buildings, order the whole ground surface of a new building to be covered with a layer of good cement concrete at least six inches thick, etc. But these by-laws need not be adopted. And a far more serious evil to health, and one which the preceding by-law does not effectually meet, is caused by the general practice of depositing midden-refuse, tainted, as it always is, with organic, and not unfrequently with excremental, matter, in sites that will, within a short period, have to be excavated for the foundation of houses. This is sowing the seeds of disease with one hand, and trying by aid of concrete to prevent them from germinating with the other. To call such deposits by the euphonious term of dry ashes is simply to abuse language. Would it be a harsh extension of preventive law if urban sanitary authorities were restricted from depositing such material within certain distances, until it had been rendered innocuous ? Derby and other towns have shown how, by means of appliances like Fryer's Destructor, this result can be accomplished, and how great a saving to the public health is thus gained.

Overcrowding nearly always occurs in sublet houses only, and the remedy for this is in the hands of every sanitary authority. But, considering the advantages that have been experienced by the adoption of Section 90 of the Public Health Act by not a few towns, would it be too much to make its adoption compulsory on all? If such were done, the rules now applicable to common lodging-houses, includ