THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1906. THE HEALTH REPORT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13286, 19 September 1906, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1906. THE HEALTH REPORT.

The Public Health Department does some very good work in the colony, and would do a great deal more if it displayed less ignorance upon matters outside its province and less complete self-satisfaction with its own ability to say the final word upon every subject under the sun. The local Health Officer, for instance, contemptuously oblivious of the common knowledge that men who love their city not only seek to make it. beautiful but to make it healthy, and deliberately blind to the fact that the Auckland movement which has led to the vote for the Town Hall is part and parcel of the movement that is clearing away slums, bringing in abundant water, securing modern drainage and generally working for the good of all our citizens, actually goes out of his way to denounce the Town Hall scheme. Our City Council is not free from blame, and we make no complaint when Dr. Frenglcy protests against its various shortcomings. But we do say that the true work of the Health Department is hampered and the public welfare depreciated when an official who.ought to know better interferes with civic progress because it is not altogether upon his own narrow lines. It is not less a disgrace to Auckland that it should have no Town Hall because it is also disgra'ced by having an infantile mortality higher than it should have. The City Council, by the way, is actually taking in hand the matter of urban workers' dwellings, which Dr. Frengley hopes it will be "progressive enough" to provide ; but we see no allusion to the inability ,of many workers to live out of the crowded town being due to the failure of the Government to provide convenient trains. Co-operation and good feeling between the Department and the local bodies are hardly helped by a studied silence towards the Government and carping fault-find-ing towards the local authorities.

Dr. Mason, in his general report, touches upon important matters, but we cannot always follow him to his conclusions. For instance, why should the handling of milk be made a municipal enterprise until " a fair trial" has been given to the rigid enforcement of sanitary regulations j

That the mortality of children wouldbe reduced by pure milk alone being available for their food is very certain, but surely it is possible to ensure the delivery of pure milk -with-: out making public functionaries of the milkmen ? We think it is as possible to ensure the delivery of pure milk by private as by public enterprise if only a fair and honest attempt is made to so amend the law i as to make it sufficiently clear and drastic. But Dr. Mason asks us to rush helter-skelter into municipal trading simply because he likes that method, which is very different to liking pure milk. And the tone of the Health Office is such' that its officials are apparently inclined to' think that nobody can prefer private ; trading, against their dogmas, without having some animosity towards ; the infants of the community. It is | the same with patent medicines. We I say that a patent medicine vendor i should be treated as any other venI dor, punished if fraud is proved i against him. and not treated as a criminal until he is proved one. We pay Dr. Mason and a cohort of other' health officers; we have public analysts and all manner of inspectors ; and it is quite easy to make fines heavy enough to cover all expenses. Why, then, cannot we depend upon our well-established law usages and customs for the suppression of fraud and imposition ? If Dr. Mason is so sure of the truth of his allegations against patent medicines in general what is to stop his proving his allegations against any patent medicine in particular? His process is hopelessly wrong." If he were in the Department of Justice ho would ask that no postcard be printed without his permission, although the law has shown itself amply able to vindicate itself in the ordinary way. Let Dr. Mason promote a Bill for simplifying the prosecution of those who vend fraudulent or objectionable "medicines" and he will have the public with him ; but it is quite unreasonable that he should be allowed to throttle the sale of preparations which form the ordinary medicine chest of the great bulk of the community unless he can prove, one by one, that they are not what they claim to be. Upon one matter at least we are in hearty agreement with the Chief Health Officer: that is as to the energetic ' war which he and some of his assistants are waging against consumption. There seems to be quite no doubt that the nature of this long mysterious disease is now well understood, and that it can be combated with hope of success provided that the necessary surroundings are obtained for patients and that the disease is encountered before it has progressed too far. But, as Dr. Mason practically says, what is the use of restoring the consumptive to comparative health if he is to be thrown back again into the surroundings under which he contracted the disease 1 It is frequently only to condemn him to a recurrence of the attack, when under more favourable surroundings he would remain in health and might gradually come to robust health. There is a very great work to be done in this direction of providing suitable occupation for the convalescent poor, and there seems no reason why State forestry should not find them the opportunity which every humane person would wish them to have. The prospects for tree-planting in our islands are illimitable, and since Dr. Mason evidently thinks the work eminently suitable for convalescents discharged from the various sanitoria for consumptives it ought not to be very difficult to arrange it. We should greet with approval a sufficiently practical experiment on the lines suggested, for it would not be a great outlay to give food and shelter in return, for a little work, while the moral and physical effect of the scheme would be entirely good.