DEVONPORT AS A HEALTH' RESORT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10035, 23 January 1896, Page 3

DEVONPORT AS A HEALTH' RESORT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,— have for some months been thinking of addressing a letter to you under the above title, but somehow or other the letter has not been written. But the somewhat alarming action of Mr. \Y. J. Napier impels me to say a few words on the subject of the healthiness of Devonport. I find it distressingly healthy, painfully healthy, and most unprofitably healthy. At first when I came here, in the midwinter, there were a few good cases, and particularly amongst children, of a kind of influenza. These were caused by a specially idiotic method of ventilating the school—a method most ingeniously devised to produce the minimum of ventilation with the maximum of draught. Mr. Napier's ideas about drainage require very careful consideration. I used to be, in my younger days, like all the sanitary reformers of those times, a believer in drainage and nothing but drainage. And for very large cities-cities of say 300,000 and upwards —a thorough system of drainage is essential. But for small places like Devonport 1 venture to say that the first results of the adoption of any such system would be a somewhat appalling addition to the death rate. And this not from any defect of the drainage system, qua drainage, but because Englishspeaking people invariably, wherever they have drainage, briug their W.C.'s into their houses instead of keeping them outside, as tliov are obliged to do with cesspits. (Spaniards, in the colonies at least, have their cesspits in and under their houses!) When I first went to Port of Spain, Trinidad, an epidemic of typhoid broke out soon after my arrival.' 1 attended 104 cases in a few months, and I was amazed to find that there were more of these in the drained, than in the undrained portion of the town Now one-half of Port of Spain was under an admirable system of drainage; the other was under the old-fashioned system. An energetic sanitary reformer, who was full of European ideas, had carried a measure of drainage for port of Spain, bpt the moment the _ inhabitants felt the pressure of the additional rates, they kicked up such a row, that even in that Crown colony, the Government had to yield to the popular clamour. The annoyed and discomfited reformers consoled among themselves with the prophecy of what would happen at the next epidemic, and how bitterly the uudrained people would regret their action. Well, when the typhoid came it was apparent that drainage was no safeguard. The reason is that adopt what plan yon like, there is and always will be, and must be an escape of sewer air from every water closet. This sewer air predisposes to, even if it does not actually convey, the infection of typhoid and other germ diseases. My opinion is that for a place like Devonport the earth closet system may be carried out thoroughly, and will prove practically, as it is theoretically, the most perfect system. I speak from a practical acquaintance with it, as a medical officer of health. I may trouble you with a few more remarks on Devonport as a health resort, but at present 1 will conclude by saying that its effect on my own health has been wonderful. The only illness, save that arising from injudicious battling, I have had since taking up my residence here, was one contracted in a country j journey in which I had to undertake a long ride on two consecutive days, and got wet through each day. In Auckland I was never well.l am, etc., R. H. BAKF.well, M.D. Devonport, Jnnuary 22.