by physicians, scientific men, and other persons of experience, to the ever-increasing condensation of the population caused by the recent improvements in several large towns, and especially in London.
In the country mischiefs of a similar kind occur wherever clearances of cottage property have been going on: and, this spring, the returns of public health have been so unfavourable that we cannot be surprised if, at the close of 1863, any possible prosperity from fine weather, and fine harvest following on three bad years, may fail to cheer us, or to look like prosperity, because epidemics have afflicted us, and typhus and smallpox have humbled our pride in our rising civilisation.
Now that the evil is upon us, what can be done?
The first idea that occurs to most people in all times of public calamity is to appeal to the Government.—Where the Government has a clearly-assigned duty to perform, it is right, of course, for the citizens to see that the duty is done. But in a country so free as ours, where the citizens have a will, a power, and an influence beyond what Government can give or take away, anything that the Administration can do is small and superficial in comparison with what municipal, social, and individual influence can effect.—Let us look a little at this.
The Lords of the Privy Council have been quite ready to attend to the appeals made to them. They have addressed their advice, with due urgency, to the thirty-six Boards of Guardians of the metropolitan parishes and unions, on the Smallpox question: and that advice consists, first, of suggestions, under five heads, for securing a more extensive vaccination, more effectively managed; and next, of a recommendation that temporary Smallpox Hospitals should be established, during the prevalence of the disease.
Such is the actual procedure of the Government.
What more is asked of them, from one quarter or another, is that vaccination should be rendered yet more compulsory by law; that law should compel a general supply of hospitals; that law should prevent public carriages being used for the conveyance of sick persons; that law should provide a due supply of good vaccine matter: that law should prevent public improvements from occasioning the over-crow ding of dwellings; that law and Orders in Council, in short, should be put in charge of the smallpox and typhus fever, so that we may be as safe as we used to be, without responsibility on our own part.
Now, these things are not the function of Government in our country; and if they were, Government could not do them half so well as we ourselves can, by a simple exercise of our powers and our influence as citizens. Where the resident citizens desire a Smallpox Hospital, there will be one. Where they do not choose to allow cabs and coaches to be infected by the removal of patients, there the hospitals or the Guardians will provide carriages for invalid use. Where they do not approve of thrusting poor people into holes and corners, to make room for new squares and fresh openings, there arrangements will be made for providing better dwellings, or for conveying the humble tenants to a new neighbourhood. Such matters as these are much better managed by the citizens in bodily presence on the spot than by the remote and intangible abstraction called Government, which falls into some mistake when it attempts to interfere in local details.
Government, that is, Parliament, has given us a Lodging-house Act: and it is for the people to see that its provisions are carried out. Government, that is, the Lords of the Privy Council, have, as I have shown, published their recommendations about temporary hospitals for smallpox while the disease prevails: and it is for the citizens to take care that the thing is done. Government has given us the Vaccination Act: and it is for us to see that it is made to work: and if there are faults which prevent its working, it is for us to point out what changes should be made, and how they may best be made. Government has sanctioned the provision of a due number of surgeons, throughout the kingdom, to vaccinate the whole population: but it is the business of the citizens, and not of the Government, to see that qualified practitioners are appointed, and that they do their duty.
It seems to me that if we put our thoughts in order a little about the duties of the case, we shall find that there are so many ways of helping, that almost every man and woman in the country may do something about putting down, and keeping down, smallpox.
First: can we help our neighbours to pure air?
A surgeon and registrar in London tells us that he has had to send six cases to the Fever Hospital from a single room of a house in his district. This was from want of air. The room is under the tiles, and the only way to enter it is by getting out upon the roof, crossing it, and slipping down into the room by “a hole about three feet square.” Even in the most airy country places we find matters almost as bad as this, in many a cottage. The family sleep all in one room; and the tiny window will not open. Thus the household are in impaired health always,—just as if they were stinted in food: and when fever or smallpox comes down upon them, it is not wonderful that seven of them are in it at once,—as has lately happened.
It is impossible to give, in a day, everybody room to move, and air enough to breathe; but it is possible any and every day to see what the state of things is in one’s neighbourhood, to put the existing law in force about the conditions of lodging-houses, about removing nuisances, &c.; and it is usually not difficult to induce respectable people to let their windows be made to open, and to take some fine breezy day at this time of the year for white-washing their houses, clearing out their dust-holes, and sunning their bedding. Not only at this, but at all times, should our influence go to discountenance the demolition of cottages and other dwellings before an ampler provision of room has been made for the tenants who are turned out: and who can say how many more good cottages and working men’s houses would be created if we all said and did what we could in furtherance of the object? It may startle some of us to hear from the Registrar General, in his last returns, that during the first quarter of this