Sanitary law

“ Health administration cannot rise far above the hygienic standards of those who provide the means for administering sanitary law. The tax-paying public must believe in the economy, utility, and necessity of efficient health administration. ”

“ Sanitary Law, embodying the principles of Preventive Medicine, may ensure to the aggregate masses of the community prolongation of life and diminution of suffering: in the working of some single enactment, it may affect the lives of generations of men, and may moderate in respect of millions the sources of orphanage and poverty.
Surely, it is no common epoch in the history of the metropolis when you are appealing to the Legislature, on [165] behalf of the Corporation, for the grant of additional powers towards the accomplishment of so great a beneficence. ”

“ Every sanitary society, every agency whose aim is to work in the interest of public health, has actively aided, and is aiding, in the propaganda for a better universal understanding of the principles of sanitation and hygiene. The individual must be educated to understand the tragic need of such a law. You cannot legislate virtue into the public conscience. ”

“ At present there is no general law in force to compel persons, who may become acquainted with the existence of an infectious disease in a dwelling-house, to give notice of the same to the Sanitary Officer....
“Surely it is more important to protect the lives of the people than to protect from loss the dealers in cattle; but until the care of public health is considered to be of more importance than the care of property, little improvement in the laws relating to health can be expected.” ”

“ The German system is dominated by the faculties of its great medical institutions and relies for its administration upon the paternal attitude of the Government. In England and the United States sanitary laws are placed under the control of special bureaus or boards of health, separate provisions for this purpose being made in the Federal and State systems, the latter also delegating to municipal corporations the powers necessary to make and enforce regulations for the protection of the public health within their jurisdictions. ”

“ And where the local authority had made default in instituting proceedings against some sanitary law breaker, he could order the chief police officer to institute them. These provisions were a recognition of the fact, long [196] patent to even the blindest, that local authorities did not do their duty, and of the necessity of devising a means of securing that a necessary public duty should be done. ”

“ That for the prevention of the disease occasioned by defective ventilation, and other causes of impurity in places of work and other places where large numbers are assembled, and for the general promotion of the means necessary to prevent disease, that it would be good economy to appoint a district medical officer independent of private practice, and with the securities of special qualifications and responsibilities to initiate sanitary measures and reclaim the execution of the law. ”

“ No one shall be subjected to forcible medical treatment or sanitary measures except in circumstances established by law. (5) The state shall exercise control over all medical facilities and over the production and trade in pharmaceuticals, biologically active substances and medical equipment. ”

“ Needful sanitary laws may be passed, but the essential thing, after all, is that they shall be faithfully and vigorously carried out and not remain dead letters in the statute-book. This must depend upon the degree to which the people are instructed in hygienic subjects and are alive to the care of health. ”

“ Now that we are extending the sanitary provisions of the Factory Act to all workshops throughout the country, of whatever kind they may be except the domestic workshop, so that every cobbler’s shop, every blacksmith’s shop, every tailor’s shop, will come under the provisions of the sanitary law, it seems to me foolish not to take advantage of the existing machinery provided by the local authorities, and the enforcement of the sanitary provisions, so far as workshops are concerned, is by this Bill given to the local authorities. ”

“ The passing of sanitary laws, and the granting to a certain department the power to enforce these laws, will not ensure good public health unless the public at large supports those laws intelligently, and it can only do this through State and municipal sanitary organizations. ”

“ They tell that our law-makers, to the tether of a very scanty knowledge, have, not unwillingly, moved to the redress of some clamorous wrong. But—tested by any scientific standard of what should be the completeness of sanitary legislation; or tested by any personal endeavour to procure the legal correction of gross and glaring evils; their insufficiencies, I do not hesitate to say, constitute a national scandal, and, perhaps in respect of their consequences, something not far removed from a national sin. ”

“ Our Constitution may properly concede that local representative authorities shall have their option whether, for sanitary purposes, to fall under a general law, or to have Local Improvement Acts of their own ”

“ This, in some measure, may be accomplished by free ventilation and paying due regard to the ordinary sanitary laws of health. If we turn a deaf ear to the warning voices of conscience and reason, and go on living and breaking the laws of health, we must expect to pay the penalty for breaking those laws. ”

“ With all this legal strength, however, there is scarcely one town in England which we have found in a low sanitary condition, nor scarcely one village marked as the abode of fever, that does not present an example of standing violations of the law, and of the infliction of public and common as well as of private injuries, the tenements overcrowded, streets replete with injurious nuisances, the streams of pure water polluted, and the air rendered noisome. ”

“ It is scarcely necessary to say that other classifications of social reform on its more hygienic side may be put forward. Thus W.H. Allen, looking more narrowly at the sanitary side of the matter, but without confining his consideration to the nineteenth century, finds that there are always seven stages: (1) that of racial tutelage, when sanitation becomes conscious and receives the sanction of law; (2) the introduction of sanitary comfort, well-paved streets, public sewers, extensive waterworks ”

“ The report on the local epidemics concludes by earnestly recommending to the government—“That sanitary measures be adopted by means of which the constitution of the people may be renewed, and their longevity increased. If this recommendation be fulfilled, we may then hope to see the condition of some of the departments ameliorated, in which now the population is so degenerated that the men seem to diminish in size each time they are measured for the conscriptions.” ”

“ By pointing out the real causes, warning will be given for their avoidance, and indications extended for the application of more certain remedies. Medical men who see only a few patients of the same occupation at distant intervals; who see them in their own dispensaries or in the hospitals, and who have no opportunities of observing such patients under the varied circumstances in which the disease may have been contracted, are left to mere guesses as to its cause. ”

“ Several urged the vigorous enforcement of the existing law. To the Vestry of Lambeth the Medical Officer of Health wrote in his report in 1856:—
“You must proceed actively against those who have raised the value of their possessions by ignoring the value of human life, who wilfully multiply disease by neglect of their pestiferous property.”
The Medical Officer of Health for Hackney wrote (1858) :—
“I feel assured that it cannot be too widely known that [135] individuals will not be allowed to deal with their property in such a manner as to cause injury to the public health. ”

“ Do you think that body would be available for the execution of sanitary measures?—Certainly not as compared with the Board of Guardians: the Commissioners of Sewers meet only monthly, and have no medical officers and no relieving officers. The Board of Guardians meets weekly, and their officers are constantly at work, night and morning. We have not even waited for the landlords, where prompt measures appeared to be necessary for the removal of any active cause of disease. ”

“ There is in the city one principal sanitary officer, a duly qualified medical man elected by the Municipal Council, whose sole duty it is to watch over the sanitary welfare of the place. Under him, as sanitary officers, are all the medical men who form the poor law medical staff. ”

“ There is a subject which I wish particularly to press on the attention of the Commissioners; the presence throughout the country, and to be found in every parish, of low lodging-houses, where persons of the lowest grade of society, beggars, thieves, and such like, take up a temporary abode in passing from one part of the kingdom to another, bringing with them the seeds of infectious diseases and oftentimes the actual disease itself into a neighbourhood previously in a comparative state of health. ”

“ Indeed, my experience of such matters suggests it to me as not unimportant, that, under any arrangement which may be made, the jurisdiction of Local Boards of Health should, at least in area, be conterminous with Poor Law Unions; so that those who administer sanitary affairs—affairs which are always chiefly relative to the poor—may, as far as possible, in their several districts, come into relation with single sets of Poor Law officers. ”

“ By such inspection of workpeople in the places of work do you conceive it would be practicable to influence largely the sanitary condition of the labouring population without inspection of the private houses?—Yes ”

“ Under these circumstances the health is not, and cannot be, anything else than extremely good; the large number of old who are still robust and in employment, the experience and evidence of all the physicians who practise amongst the mill population, the result of the reports of the district physician, but above all, the healthy state they were in during several epidemics, and also the small proportion of deaths as seen in the parish register, all afford the most striking evidence of the fact of their healthiness. ”

“ So far as the absolutely destitute were concerned, all had, by the law of England, subject to certain conditions, right to food, shelter, and medical attendance; and they accordingly received gratuitous medical treatment at workhouses, or dispensaries, and in sick wards. ”

“ The Commissioners desire to ascertain, either from the officers of such institutions or from the medical practitioners of the most extensive practice amongst the poorer classes, or from those who visit them in their habitations, to what extent continued fever, and other contagious febrile diseases, are prevalent amongst the poor;—what is the character of the streets and houses in which these maladies most frequently arise, or spread with the greatest rapidity ”

“ Subjecting the workshop to occasional medical inspection, in order to prevent the intensity of any maladies that break out, and with that view to examine the workmen from time to time to detect any symptoms of disease, and to oblige the workman attacked to abstain from work until the medical officer declares that he may resume it without inconvenience. 7. Obliging workmen to wear frocks or blouses, which they should leave in the workshop when they quit work ”

“ A similar law has never existed among any ancient people, although we find among several of them no equivocal proofs of the solicitude of their legislators to introduce into the laws some precepts of health, applicable to the people they governed. ”

“ The infection arises from a want of cleanliness and ventilation, and its influence is promoted by damp, fatigue, sorrow, and hunger. A vigilant exercise of all the means of prevention might, in a short period, supersede the use of hospitals, by extinguishing the disease; a prospect in which the philanthropist might more safely indulge, if he could calculate with the same confidence on the wisdom as on the power of his species. ”

“ They are desirous that this inquiry should be conducted with care in large towns, where the sources of contagion or the circumstances which promote its rapid diffusion among the population are more rife than in the rural districts; they are anxious to obtain the assistance of the medical practitioners having charge of hospitals and dispensaries in such towns, because such institutions afford the best means of observing under what circumstances febrile contagious diseases are disseminated ”

“ The later and better knowledge of the real nature of fever cases has been obtained by a similar range of observation gained from the cases in fever hospitals. Applications have been several times made to the Commissioners by medical men engaged in particular researches to aid them in the removal of the impediments to extended inquiry, by collecting the information to be derived—from the sick-wards of the workhouses and the out-door medical relief lists. ”

“ Thus we find, on inquiry into the sanitary condition of the population of different districts, that the average chances of life of the people of one class in one street will be 15 years, and of another class in a street immediately adjacent, 60 years. In one district of the same town I find, on the examination of the registries, the mortality only 1 out of every 57 of the population; and in another district 1 out of every 28 dies annually. ”

“ How erroneous the inferences are in their unrestrained generality, which assume that the poverty or the privation which is sometimes the consequence,—is always the cause, of the disease, will have been seen from such evidence as that adduced from Glasgow and Spitalfields, proving that the greater proportion of those attacked by disease are in full work at the time; and the evidence from the fever hospitals, that the greatest proportion of the patients are received in high bodily condition. ”