SANITARY CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION, GLASGOW.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 61, 8 February 1884, Page 3

SANITARY CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION, GLASGOW.

(Britieh Mail, Nov. 1.) The annual congress of the Sanitary Institute commenced in Glasgow on Tuesday, the 2nd, when the President, Professor G. M. Murphy, M.D., F.R.S.; delivered an address; remarking that by the Providential or natural law of the association of the physical with the other qualities was worked out the predominance of the best. In the great struggle of nations the best won, because goodness was the associate of strength and healthfulness. The maintenance of the sanitary condition of a people was a necessity to the maintenance of a high position among others. This became yearly more and more the case, as increasing civilisation made us increasingly dependent upon sanitary regulations, and determined more clearly what those regulations should be. It was thus that civilisation met and counteracted her own evils; The clustering of people in masses together promoted in various ways the liability to disease, while growing intelligence and rapidly-ad-vancing science pointed out the means of preventing and arresting it. As prevention was better than cure, so the science which promoted the former was better than that which attempted the latter. To this the members of his profession were fully alive, and, though their pecuniary gains were won by their efforts to cure disease, it was their ,constant and unselfish aim to trace out and stamp out every source of disease; and it was their desire and practice to take an active part in every movement which had for its object the improvement of the sanitary condition of our people. Well would it be for our country when increased opportunity was given to the members of his profession, in Parliament and out of Parliament, of making a deeper impression on the convictions of our country, One result that might be anticipated from such an influence would ere long be the institution of a sanitary department in the Legislature, distinct from the Local Government Board, and under the direction of a Minister of Sanitary Affairs, He could scarcely conceive anything more likely than that to conduce to the wellbeing of our people, and their success in everything they undertook, whether it were literary, scientific, commercial, or mili. tary. Such an office, extending its adminis. tration to the sanitary condition of cattle, would do much to promote agriculture, and to reduce the price and improve the quality of animal food, It would find a further scope for action in considering and checking the diseases to which our various food-pro-ducing plants became more liable as they were more highly cultivated, and which, in many parts of the globe, were producing great devastation and pecuniary loss, with accompanying distress and injury to the people. Under such a sanitary office the department of the Registrar-General would properly be placed, The Ordnance and Geological Surveys and the Meteorological Office should be in connection with it. In connection with the Congress, an exhibition of sanitary appliances and materials has been opened in Burnbank Drill-hall,