SANITAY PRECAUTIONS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume I, Issue 2, 17 April 1880, Page 4

SANITAY PRECAUTIONS.

(From the New Zealand Times.)

"Five hundred years ago," said that famous physican, Sir William Gull, in a lecture to a crowd of medical students, " an English Prince died of ague ; now no one dies of ague. Today an English Prince (Albert Edward) almost died of typhoid fever. Five hundred years hence no one will die of typhoid." Five centuries is a long while, and in this instance was probably used by the lecturer to make a telling phrase, but it behoves our civic authorities to bestir themselves so as to hurry on bo devoutly-to-be-wished a consummation. What the lectui*er meant was this, — that formerly ague wa9 very prevalent in Great Britain, but that with the advance of civilization and the progress of the healing art, ague had become a comparatively rare, and a never fatally-ending disease; and he explained at length that by dint and care in draining and cleaning our towns, even if we did not find some drug which should as completely cure typhoid as quinine does ague, yet that our houses and our cities should be so sweet and so clean that typhoid fever, like ague and leprosy, in Great Britain, should cease to bring misfortune and death into our midst. Since the beginning of this year typhoid has attacked many a household in this city, and has laid low the strong breadwinner, the newly-made husband , the only son of a widowed mother, and the precious children of loving parents, and has carried off the nearest and dearest in not a few families, and has caused much and dire misery and anguish. There are few diseases so difficult to combat as typhoid fever. It is subtle, singularly tenacious, and extreme long-continued debility is its residue. It is a demon whose presence on the threshold of any dwelling-place may well strike terror into the hearts of the inmates, for, once admitted, the intruder works his will to the uttermost, and levies costly tribute before he departs. When we reflect that all this loss of life, all this misery and suffering, are caused by wilful neglect of the commonest and simplest sanitary laws, and that year after year a like number of deaths, and a like amount of suffering, has obtained in this city, and that year aftei yeai, as the town grows bigger, the population more aud more numerous, consequently so much the greater will be the suffering and the mortality, so much the more should our wrath be kindled against those in high places who continue to quibble about a particular engineer's special fad in drainage, instead of acting boldly, and at once, thereby saving a terrible waste of life, and a large amount of mental suffering. We think the public should insist on something being done. One of the ablest writers on this fever proposed to give it a long Greek name which meant " born of putridity," and indeed no name could be" more suitable. It is a disease born of filth. In the winter, when the rains have washed away the dirt, it is comparatively rare; but is most prevalent in the early autumn, at the close of a long dry hot summer, when the drains have not been properly flushed, and, instead of being so many channels for the sasy removal of filth, have become so many receptacles for stagnant, putrefying, organic material, as our noses tell us whenever we walk down the streets. As certainly as dry, hot summers succeed each other, so, unless active measures be taken, will typhoid fever be rife in our midst. We repeat, typhoid fever is a disease born of filth. If there were no filth, there would be no typhoid. Bnt this is not the worst of it. It is to be remembered that a host of other diseases arise from this same ever-present, everywhere-existing filth. Bad drainage, dirt, and bad water supply are the chief means of distribution of those terrible maladies, the plague, cholera, and typhus fever, which happily have not yet reached our shores, but which most certainly will do so sooner or later, and will then spread with fearful violence unless we wash and are clean. Bad sewerage, insufficient drainage, dirt heaps, and the odours arising therefrom, cause epysemia, erysipelas, anaemia, diphtheria, dysentery, the production of internal parasites, and much of that summer diarhooea which is so fatal to our children. Surely it behoves our citizens to awake and rouse themselves, and to insist on the City Council doing something, and doing that something at once and without any further delay whatsoever. Just now, the people are very keenly alive to the advantage of a West Coast railway, and think eagerly of the prosperity which they fondly imagine its completion would bring them ; but while so keenly alive to their interests in this direction, they overlook the fact that a canker is eating into their vitals in another direction and threatening them in a far more deadly fashion.