Untitled

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9012, 27 March 1888, Page 4

In a series of communications which have recently appeared 11 our columns from the pen of. Dr. Leger Erson, the writer has placed the question of sanitation in a practical light, and given some interesting and valuable suggestions. There are doubtless many who think that we have too much of the sanitation question in Auckland;; and in, truth the parading of our cases of typhoid fever, and abuse of the City Council as the cause, have been carried on ad nauseam. No other place trumpets forth its every case of infectious disease as Auckland does, and in our pursuit of excitement we have succeeded in making people at a distance look on Auckland as a place; to be shunned, when in truth our low death rate shows our city to be one of the healthiest in the colonies, and consequently in the world. Far be it from us to say that anything in our. insanitary conditions should be concealed, or that there should be secresy maintained in respect of anything that it is to the welfare of the world to know; but to constantly trumpet abroad our cases of sickness is as profitless to the world as it seems foolish in ourselves, and considering this morbid tendency, we cordially approve of the action of the civic authorities in putting the screw down on the too great facilities that have been afforded for making public parade of afflictions that we have only in common with every other centre of population in the colony. At the same time, while this is so, and while as a fact the health of Auckland compares favourably with that of any other place of equal population, the question of sanitation is to us, as it is to others, one of the first and most urgent questions of the times. To all old residents in these colonies there comes the unpleasant reflection that typhoid fever, which in earlier days was comparatively unknown, is now apparently becoming the pest of colonial cities, and when we know that of all diseases that threaten human life there is not one other more uniformly resulting from preventible causes, the spread of typhoid everywhere calls loudly for the most stringent repressive action. There is perhaps no other epidemic the cause of which is so accurately known. It is simply the outcome of uncleanliness, and cleanliness is fatal to its existence. Its presence, therefore, is always a shame to a district, and it is the avenger of negligence and dirt. In the earlier days of the colonies, when the atmosphere was not contaminated by the aggregations of human beings ; its name was not a fear ; now, when the earth appears to have become saturated with the neglected overflow of the offscour of human life, it seems to find sustenance everywhere. We cannot, of course, restore to the sites of our cities and towns the purity of the virgin soil, but we have certainly to combat the impurities we have created, and prevent further accumulations, or we shall have a far more costly price to pay in the expenses entailed to the community by struggling with numerous cases of sickness, and in the loss of many valuable lives. The proposal made by our contributor may seem an expensive one —the appointment of provincial Boards of Health, wholly apart from our local governing bodies, and containing professional men with scientific training in sanitary science, and men possessed of sanitary engineering experience. From such a proposal, people will be disposed to shrink in these days of retrenchment and economy ; but it would be a rash statement to say that thorough and trenchant action in relation to typhoid and its causes would not be real economy. That the existing system of having local governing bodies the only local Boards of Health is perfectly useless is manifest to all. Apart from the fact that people chosen merely to make roads and streets cannot be expected to have any special knowledge on a matter that demands special skill and special treatment, these bodies are only too frequently fettered, and their action paralysed by private influences and local considerations. As an instance, one of our suburban Boards of Health consists of members, the majority of whom are pecuniarily interested in the continuance in their district of one of the mo.v, tathsome nuisances-to be

found ; and pur own City Coun^ilu^ also a Board of Health, had for'™"* months been appealed to i n check the continuance of that *1 to spot. What is really wanted is fewith expert knowledge of the J and with powers so extensive ♦1 T may instantly drop on a nuisanl. Jt imperatively order its removal a '/ n(1 do not hesitate to say that, until * e stringent powers are riven to •> SUol > authority instructed to deal trenJP*I*l1 * 1 with centres of infection, our tnct, m common with many u ls " district will continue to pay hea vv ' er m death. In Sydney, as w e E by a recent telegram, the Goverjj? have taken the sanitation of the* er ' : polls out of the hands of the Citv r tr °" cil) and appointed a Board with 4 ' '' engineers and other experts to ~ri ? with the growing danger in the citt Pp!e its suourbs : and we feel confident the course which has been found 41 sary m Sydney must in some i ?' form be taken for our cities and r if we are not content to se« tliP ■ rii > periodically swept by typhoid saying so, we do not desire to iJ' . J " the negligence in our Citv r-5 to ? We believe that they have done X perhaps as much as they , n „i . lrUctl l done with the resources avifl ki 8 promote the health of the tin V 0 city itself is by no means unhealtiV' 0 it is m the suburbs thS lui - V: find the prevalence of t!ii- ,w----and it is to local causes, freonpS ''» v > negligence of householders thorn yt,ie far more than to defects in tt K draiaage system, that the evil + ! y charged. Indeed, the indirtpJ Je inefficiency of the local Bench Tl or ing with cases of nuisance | n ''I 1" before them is far more to £ llt negligence in the Citv I' OU f. ? officers for the existence of l,i' "f But, from whatever cauV o?Searising typhoid will never bestS out until adequate powers are confer? d on some independent body simiK the Local Government Hoard mLI land, or the .Metropolitan Board\ Sydney, commissioned to deal, with a prompt and farm hand, with evm thing that may become a nidus of fever