Makgill. — Nature's Efforts at Sanitation. 139 



In conclusion, it may be remarked that the beginning of a 

 period of depreciation in the currency is pre-eminently a time 

 favourable to borrowing. I would not suggest borrowing for 

 any and all purposes ; what is not wanted may be dear at any 

 price. But if there are certain improvements that are recog- 

 nised as necessary to be effected in the near future the sooner 

 they are effected the better ; it may be advisable to wait 

 a little to tide over a temporary scarcity in the money-market 

 and a temporarily unfavourable condition of the labour-mar- 

 ket, but the first favourable opportunity should be seized — the 

 burden incurred will grow lighter and lighter. In fact, just 

 as an era of depreciating currency promotes enterprise and 

 business in the case of the individual, so it should generate in 

 Governments, central and local, an increased eagerness to 

 initiate schemes for the welfare of their people. 



Art. X. — Nature's Efforts at Sanitation. 

 By E. H. Makgill, M.D., D.P.H. 

 [Read before the Auckland Institute, 20th October, 1902.~] 

 For those whose duty it is to frame laws and construct works 

 for the safety of the public health nothing can be more profit- 

 able than the study of the methods adopted by Nature. What 

 could be more perfect than the way she deals with what we 

 are accustomed to regard as waste matter? Her system, as I 

 shall attempt to explain, is at once effectual and economical, 

 since everything is utilised as well as rendered innocuous. 

 Nature has framed certain sanitarv laws more reaching than 

 any by-laws the most exemplary local body ever conceived, 

 for we cannot evade their working, however we may attempt 

 to ignore them. 



Eliminating the Unfit. 

 If a community elects to live in narrow dismal streets 

 where the air cannot circulate, and allows the sun to be ex- 

 cluded by smoke and high walls, and fails to give Nature's 

 scavengers opportunity to dispose of the waste material, the 

 penalty will assuredly follow. Natural law says such people 

 must be kept in check, consequently their children grow up 

 pale, weakly, and abnormal, an easy prey to Nature's most 

 drastic remedy, epidemics of infectious disease. Overcrowd- 

 ing is dealt with by the law of the survival only of the fittest ; 

 the weakly ones increase only to be weeded out that the 

 balance may be restored. Where the most primitive condi- 



