Mitigation

“ And if all restraint is removed, it is as certain as fate that their condition will be far worse than it ever was before. It will be the old system, with all its mitigations rescinded and all its horrors intensified. ”

“ If the refuse matter and excreta of a city are not promptly and carefully removed; if the streets are not of the proper width, and regularly cleansed; if houses are allowed to be so constructed that effective ventilation is impossible; if the water-supply is insufficient, or tainted with organic matter; and if persons are allowed free entrance, suffering with dangerous infectious diseases, and no well-directed efforts are made to destroy the noxious matters thus introduced, misery, disease, and a fearful rate of mortality, will be the normal results. ”

“ Suppose that all the dead animal matter, human or other, were to be incorporated with the soil under these rapid changes of saturation and drying, of diffusion and emanation, what a mass of poison, what danger to the living! What foresight they showed in avoiding it, what labour and effort, but what results! Can anyone pretend that a system so vast, so beautiful, so coherent in all its parts, had been engendered and conserved merely by an ignorant fanaticism, or that a people who had so much of wisdom in their actions had none in their thoughts? ”

“ Useless practical measures are adopted to abate the evil, active proceedings will have to be taken and pushed to the utmost to remove entirely the root and branch and trunk and body of this tree of destruction. ”

“ And if that be so, by whom shall this feebleness be set right?
But let us return to that special form of her resistless intervention that we find in parthenogenesis. And we shall do well to remember that, remote as the world may seem in which these problems confront us, they do indeed yet concern ourselves very nearly. Who would dare to affirm that no interventions take place in the sphere of man—interventions that may be more hidden, but not the less fraught with danger? And in the case before us, which is right, in the end,—the insect, or nature? ”

“ The government has been forced to take the place of the individual in a hundred different ways; in, for instance, such matters as the prevention of fires, the construction of drainage systems, the supply of water, light, and transportation. ”

“ It is sad to be reminded, that, whatever evils threaten the health of a population, whether from pollutions of water or of air,—whether from bad drainage or overcrowding, they fall heaviest on the most innocent victims—upon children of tender years. ”

“ This form of deterrence it is that lies at the base of all our Public Health and Factory Legislation; a deterrence that leads the owners and occupiers to bestir themselves to keep their dwellings up to the current local standard of healthiness, the occupiers of factories to maintain these in accordance with the requirements of the law, and the operatives in unhealthy trades to observe the precautions prescribed against disease. ”

“ The process of destruction is not sudden, it is gradual. It is a long-drawn-out process. It involves the multiplication of the diseased, the maimed, the feeble-minded, of paupers and lunatics and criminals. Even natural selection thus includes the need for protecting the feeble, and so renders urgent the task of social reform, while the more thoroughly this task is carried out with the [15] growth of civilization, the more stupendous and overwhelming the task becomes. ”

“ It is not possible, for example, for one in a densely-populated place, to enforce regulations for a supply of wholesome water, for carrying off to a safe distance all the refuse and noxious matters of a great city, or to protect himself from the presence of persons suffering from infectious diseases. ”

“ The reformer, he continues, who aims at reducing fire waste must turn his attention primarily to hastening the alarm. The true cure of the matter is, not what quantity of gear it takes to deal with huge conflagrations, but how to concentrate at the earliest stage upon the outbreaks as they occur, and to check them before they have grown beyond control. ”

“ Some take to handicrafts, some to agriculture, some to household work, and some to the only services of danger to which the population is exposed; for the sole perils that threaten this tribe are, first, from those occasional convulsions within the earth, to foresee and guard against which tasks their utmost ingenuity—irruptions of fire and water, the storms of subterranean winds and escaping gases. ”

“ THERE is a menace about Monday morning which few have escaped. It is a menace which in one guise or another clouds hundreds of millions of pillows, gives to the golden sunlight which filters through a billion panes the very hues and character of jaundice. It is the menace of factory and workshop, harsh prisons which shut men and women from the green fields and the pleasant by-ways; the menace of new responsibilities to be faced and new difficulties to be overcome. ”

“ But if we wish to root out these influences, we must proceed as if we were weeding out tares in a field. If we leave the roots in the ground, they will sooner or later spring up again to fresh life. Complete eradication is the only cure. ”

“ The results of all sanitary investigation indicate clearly the vital necessity for the complete and speedy removal from human habitations of all matters which, by their decomposition, may tend to the production of disease, and early measures should be taken by the authorities of all towns, especially those which are at all compactly built, to secure this removal. ”

“ VILLAGE SANITARY WORK.
It is a recently recognized but an old and universal truth, that human life involves the production of refuse matters, which, unless proper safeguards are taken, are sure to become a source of disease and death. The danger is not confined alone nor chiefly to that element of household waste which is most manifestly offensive, but in almost equal degree to all manner of organic refuse. ”

“ Such, then, in brief, are the three main modes of elimination: elimination by physical and climatic conditions; elimination by enemies; elimination by competition. Observe that it is a differentiating process. Unlike the indiscriminate destruction before alluded to, the incidence of which is on all alike, good, bad, and indifferent, it separates the well-adapted from the ill-adapted, dooming the latter to death, and allowing the former to survive and procreate their kind. The destruction is not indiscriminate, but differential. ”

“ But neither the increase nor putrefaction of the wound nor the magnet’s attraction of iron, is ordained by any inevitable law, although these consequences must necessarily follow, in due obedience to the first principles of the existing order of nature, when no means of prevention can be found and applied. ”

“ When the occurrence of any damage, albeit unpredictable in the current state of scientific knowledge, may seriously and irreversibly harm the environment, public authorities shall, with due respect for the principle of precaution and the areas within their jurisdiction, ensure the implementation of procedures for risk assessment and the adoption of temporary measures commensurate with the risk involved in order to preclude the occurrence of such damage. Article 6. Public policies shall promote sustainable development. ”

“ How great is the improvement which an active and pious individual sometimes effects in a neighbourhood!—an improvement which, commencing p. 89in one place, often spreads far around. How extensive then might be the blessed effects of the true servants of God acting in full and unanimous co-operation!—General alarm has caused much good to be done, in cleansing the towns and villages of the kingdom from physical pollutions; let there be shown the same zeal and energy in the removal of moral pollutions, so much more pernicious and fatal, as being destructive of both body and soul. ”

“ The officer, having the power to remove at once any case of fever from a densely populated locality, as well as to enforce measures of prevention, such as the removal of accumulated filth, stagnant pools of water, or the correction of any other local circumstances, would perform duties which would redound considerably to the advantage of the community. ”

“ This seems therefore to be the true method of removing all those local causes326 which produce epidemics, or at least of preventing them from doing hurt; and, without attention to the natural duties and occupations of man, it is to be feared that all artificial modes of prevention will be found not only precarious but ineffectual. ”

“ Under these circumstances of necessity and danger, it will require considerable skill to effect the purpose without increasing the disease, and, as each case has its own peculiar characteristics, it is necessary before one attempts to admit air as a remedy, to previously estimate the destructive consequences which may result from so doing, and ascertain whether it will be injurious or beneficial to the building. ”

“ Any one who had gone to inspect the body on the occurrence of death in those places, with powers to enforce sanitary measures, such as the removal of the survivors, the drainage and cleansing and ventilation of the premises, would, undoubtedly, have had the means of preventing much mortality. ”

“ In a state of necessity, such as a state of war, the occurrence of a public danger, or fire, flood, famine, earthquake, serious epidemic among human beings or animals or animal diseases, insects or pests or any other similar events, or in any other circumstances which might endanger the safety of the population, in whole or in part. ”

“ So far from giving safety and balance to the ‘natural forces,’ these time-honoured restrictions, springing from a narrow theory which took its rise in a pre-scientific age, are fraught with the gravest dangers, creating a perpetual struggle and unrest, filling society with the perturbations and morbid developments of powers that ought to be spending themselves freely and healthfully on their natural objects. ”

“ It is the change I want, and the blessed sun, and a gentle air in which I can sit out and see the trees and running water: these mere defensive hygienics cannot advance one, though they may prevent evil. ”

“ Life and property, indeed, were secure from violence almost all over the world, zymotic diseases, bacterial diseases of all sorts had practically vanished, everyone had a sufficiency of food and clothing, was warmed in the city ways and sheltered from the weather—so much the almost mechanical progress of science and the physical organisation of society had accomplished. ”

“ That it is important for the sake of economy, as well as for the health of the population, that the practice of the removal of refuse in suspension in water, and by combined works, should be applied to all houses, especially those occupied by the poorer classes. ”

“ That the emanations from human remains are of a nature to produce fatal disease, and to depress the general health of whosoever is exposed to them; and that interments in the vaults of churches, or in grave-yards surrounded by inhabited houses, contribute to the mass of atmospheric and other impurities by which the general health and average duration of life of the inhabitants is diminished. ”

“ A plan for concerted action will have to be arranged, and every precaution taken. The slightest slip would mean failure, and merciless punishment. Even if I succeed in gathering together all these better elements on board, we shall yet be outnumbered two to one, perhaps more, and our only hope rests in surprise. ”

“ We cannot prevent the angry waves from rising, but we can build ships to defy their fiercest wrath. We cannot prevent mist from ascending in certain conditions of sky and soil, but we can drain low-lying ground, and prevent the mist from being fatally charged with smoke. We cannot abolish the microbes with which our planet swarms, and if we could we should be surrounded with intolerable putrifaction; but we can observe the laws of public and private sanitation, maintain a high state of vitality, and make ourselves practically invulnerable. ”

“ Modern business common sense counts strikes and lockouts among preventable industrial diseases, just as the modern science of medicine classes smallpox, diphtheria, typhoid fever, the plague, tuberculosis, and the hookworm amongst preventable bodily diseases. The strike is a violent eruption, according to those who have made the closest study of the situation, resulting from long-continued abuses of bad management, bad selection, bad assignment of duties, and other vicious or ignorant practices. ”

“ Men band together, therefore, to protect a common water supply, to suppress smoke, dust, and foul gases which render the common air unfit to breathe. The State helps the group to protect itself from bad food as it does from destruction of property. ”

“ Your city is threatened with typhoid fever. Do you import doctors, hire nurses, and rush through appropriations for new hospitals? or do you boil the water and inspect the milk?
You are an intelligent human being, living in a scientific age. ”

“ It must not be supposed that these matters are dealt with from the standpoint of a vigilance society for combating vice. The demand throughout is for the regulation of life, for reform, but for reform quite as much in the direction of expansion as of restraint. ”

“ They cannot be broken or really disobeyed; but we may set ourselves in fruitless antagonism to them,—as by building a bridge too weak to stand, by various kinds of wrong conduct, eating unduly or wrong kind of food, by careless sanitation and neglect of health. But all such ignorance or neglect of the laws of nature involves disaster. ”

“ The most expensive and wisely constructed building and the best modern equipment will not long remain in a sanitary condition unless watchful care is exercised, and intelligence and energy applied to the eradication of dirt, and conditions that favor the multiplication of the enemies to life and health that are ever present. ”