Unhealthy Barracks.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5024, 4 June 1889, Page 3

Unhealthy Barracks.

SANITARIANS PUZZLED.

Why are Dublin Barracks unhealthy ? remarks a Home paper, it is not an exaggeration to say, is the hardest sanitary conundrum of the day. An official report on the subject | ■just issued shows that for once the sanitarians ' are at fault. Wo are constantly assured that • nothing is easier in the present state of j sanitary science than to detect the cause of j an outbreak of typhoid fever in an inhabited j house, and, given competent sanitary engi-1 ncering, nothing so easy as to prevent its j recurrence. Rut Dublin .Barracks stand forth j as a bold concrete contradiction of this corn- j folding assurance. Since the reign of Queen Anne this place has been a pest-house ; and what it was then it is now, in spile of the utmost efforts of the most illustrious sanitarians in the world to make it wholesomely habitable. All the resources of wealth and science have been lavished in the investigation of its insanitary condition and in the construction of remedial works. But to tills day sanitary science cannot even tell us why or how typhoid fever hangs round Dublin Barracks, or why or how, after every fresh discovery of the cause, and after the application of every fresh preventive plan, the pestilence breaks out again with defiant virulence. Dublin Barracks, in fact, shroud the great sanitary mystery of our time, and the report now published gives us an account of the last attack made on the hidden enemy that poisons the atmosphere of this abode of death. Yet Mr Rogers Field, who has compiled the document, admits that his investigation, so [far as it has gone, reveals nothing to account for the persistently insanitary character of the buildings. The history of the case is indeed a dismal one for the sanitarians. They have assailed the Fever Fiend in Dublin Barracks by means of two Royal Commissions, the Army Sanitary Committee, two Boards of officers, and any number of Boards of Medical and Engineer Officers. All their recommendations have been carried out regardless of expense. A sum of £17,000 has been spent during the last ton years in sanitating Dublin Barracks, and the neb result is that, whilst it is impossible to discover in the buildings any more sanitary defects to remove save of the most trival character, the barracks still remain as fatal to life and health as if their living rooms were in direct communication witha putrid and poisonous system of drains. The prevalent opinion up to November last was that the source of mischief must be looked for in the subsoil. There is also a remarkable agreement on the part of everybody that the buildings arc too much huddled together, and that there must be extensive demolitions in order to let in light and air. But on every other point llio conclusions of investigators have either been upset by the iron logic of facts or are in conflict with subsequent conclusions, based on fresher facts, arrived at by equally compont investigators.