The Press. SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1897. THE PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9811, 21 August 1897, Page 6

The Press. SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 1897. THE PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH.

The British Institute of Public Health celebrated its jubilee by a meeting at the Mansion House on the 16th June last, when an address to her Majesty was voted in connection with the remarkable progress made in the public health during the past sixty years. There are, in fact, few more gratifying features in the history of the Queen's reign than the advance in hygiene. Not only has there been a most marked diminution in the rate of mortality, but with more rational methods both of prevention and cure some diseases have been nearly stamped out, while others have been deprived to a large extent of their terrors. The Lord Mayor, who presided at the meeting, I said he asked a friend of his what he I thought would most strike his father if. he came to life again, and the reply was, " What -would, I think, surprise him most, would be to see how few people were marked with the smallpox." Lord Playfair, who also | delivered a most interesting speech on ( the occasion, pointed out that typhus, [which was common sixty years ago, had now almost disappeared, and he expressed his belief that consumption would in time become as scarce as 1 typhus.

As regards the progress made in robbing diseases, and more especially those, requiring surgical treatment, of their terrors, the ohief honours were naturally paid to Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of chloroform, and Lord Lister, to whom we owe the antiseptic system of surgery which has. enabled medioal men to control the healing of wounds in such a remarkable way, and thus to perform successfully operations which in olden days would have meant certain death to the patient. In regard to the former Lord Playfaib said that it was strange that anaesthesia, which nearly at the same time was discovered in America and in England, should date only from 1847, because it had been palpably used in a notable case of surgery in the earliest operation on record. They were told in Genesis that previous to the operation Adam was put into a deep sleep. Yet it was only in 1848 that Sir James Simpson made anesthesia general by using chloroform in all painful cases of surgery and midwifery. His Lordship made anothe* good point when he referred to the appropriateness of the fact that the Lord Mayor presided at the meeting. For many centuries, he said, the Lord Mayor was responsible for the health of that great metropolis. Good but highhanded Queen Elizabeth used to write him scolding letters because he allowed the city to grow so fast that it then actually contained 160,000 people, who, as she said, "became heaped together, and in a sort smothered;" and she forbade any more houses to be erected within three miles of London and Westminster. Notwithstanding this Royal ordinance, London, as everybody knows, has grown to be a vast city containing five millions of people, who dwell in far more healthy environments than they did ha Tudor times. The rate of mortality then was 80 in the 1000, and now, as Lord Playfaib pointed out, it is less than 19 per 1000, and is steadily being reduced. For the month preceding the Jubilee it had actually dropped down to the unprecedentedly low rate of 14.9 per 1000.

While great progress has thus been made, it must not for a moment be imagined that there is no further improvement to be effected, and that nothing further requires to be done. On the contrary, Lord Playfaie told his hearers that even in England it was estimated that one and a I half/ million people were sick all the year round, in addition to between twenty and thirty million short cases of sickness. There is no doubt that a large proportion of these cases result from breaking natural laws, and could easily be prevented were there less ignorance and a greater inclination to take advantage of the means which science has placed within our reach. There is no question that the medical profession do not yet fulfil their proper function in the community. Their highest and most useful mission would be to ward off illness instead of attempting to cure it.- If the public were wise they would pay doctors to keep them well, and not wait until they became ill before availing themselves of their skill. So utterly wrong is our present system that if medical men were to look at their profession from a purely monetary point of view— which fortunately they do not—we really do all we can to punish them for keeping away sickness from a community, and when we fall ill we offer them the

strongest inducements to postpone qZ'- * recovery as long as possible. I* Lord Pl\ypatr very finely aaia'-in"--'' - the speech from which we have quoted ■ ' that deaths represent the wrecks which strew the shore after the storms of life while cases of sickness tell us of tha storm-tossed barks on tho ocean of life • ' and indicate the pain and suffering- _P- " humanity. Martial said « Life is not ' to live, but to live well," and surely it '* is our duty to do all in our powor by ■' - following the teachings of science ml •' j the dictates of common sense, to lessen - ! the burden and the sorrow of pain and fluttering which still press so hoavilJ upon mankind. If action, public aad private, still lags far behind the * teachings of science in England, ft has to be confessed that in Now Ze«, land we are more backward still. Here ' the health of the community seems to be the last consideration. Wo can ' afford to pay one Mayors, who arß • frequently mere windbags, boir,„ neither use nor ornament, but most ol our towns refuse to vote the salary of a medical officer of health. If ag ' in the case of Lyttelton, they' are • '• driven by the scourge of sickuoss and epidemics to appoint such an officer, and he succeeds in reducing the rate of illuess and death, they reward him by depriving him of hist office, and determine to do without a. medical adviser until the town. IJrj once more drifted into a thoroughly . unsanitary condition and they find" tha / lives of themselves and their families ' again in peril. What are \vq doing in Christchurch to improvo the health of the community ? We have in operation the most filthy, dangerous and barbarous system of sewage removal known on the face of tho globe. We know that, with propec supervision and regulation of the meat and milk supplies many lives! annually might bo saved and mucbk v :, painful and costly sickness avoided,' T We talk about these things in a feeble ' J and casual kind of way from time to ■/ &"■ time, but nothing is ever done. Ap-. !if • parently we, too, want the stimulus oi; IT a sorious epidemic to arouse us intc jr. action. It is true that the science of! Wpublic health has made great strides j ijj during the Queen's reign. In Eng- \ft land, however, the practice is abouj" I twenty years behind the discoverieswhioh have been made, and in New '• Zealand we are lagging at least half aJF, oentury in the rear. Bo far as takingf £ any praotical advantage of the im*- \\ provements made is concerned, we are ' : .< pretty much in the same position as i;| we should have been if no discoveries ij •at all had been made daring the - tj wign. " M