128 The Public Health. [ Jan., 
is, that in half the parishes of London the post is a sinecure, and 
in the other half the Officers of Health are insulted and persecuted, 
if they dare to perform duties which they themselves think are 
connected with their office. Several of these gentlemen have con- 
scientiously thrown up their offices rather than be paid for not 
doing what they felt they ought to do. 
Dr. Rumsey advocates the division of the Country into Regis- 
tration Districts upon the plan of Dr. Farr, and to each of these 
districts appointing a specially educated State Physician. He 
points out the utter impossibility of educating every medical man 
in the kingdom in such a way as to perform the duties of a State 
Physician. He would give the appointment of this officer to local 
bodies. He thinks that nothing is so likely “to damp or even 
extinguish local research and local action,” so much as continual 
Government interference. ‘“'The public medical officer,” he says, 
“of each extensive district closely observing, verifying, collecting, 
and revising his facts, making his examinations and reports, direct- 
ing his subalterns, inspecting public institutions, and advising the 
magistrates and the executive bodies within his sphere, would give a 
true value and force to local action which it has never yet attained: 
would elicit facts, and establish conclusions from local physical 
conditions and phenomena which might remain for ever unnoticed 
under mere central action.” 
If anything were wanted to show how imperfectly the best 
appointed Central Boards may act, it would be seen in the almost 
entire failure of the Poor Law Board to fulfil them. Here we 
have a great department of Government appointed on purpose to 
overlook the actions of Boards of Guardians and superintend the 
Workhouse officers, and yet under their very noses in London, a 
system of abominations was practised in Workhouses, that have 
led to a complete revision of the whole system. It now appears 
that the same cruel treatment of the poor, the sick, and the aged, 
has been going on in our Country Workhouses. It seems to be 
of no use to appoint new Inspectors. These gentlemen, as soon 
as Government pay crosses their palms, assume a new position. 
They turn round upon their old philanthropic brethren, and sub- 
mitting to the power of red tape, call dirt and neglect, economy, and 
disease and death, the necessary lot of the poor. The English pub- 
lic, those at least who have heart enough to care for the sorrows 
and sufferings of the less opulent amongst us, are deeply indebted 
to the members of the medical profession, and the editors of 
medical journals, who have been istituting inquiries into the 
working of some of our Country Workhouses. The result of their 
inquiries has been to expose in the country a worse system of 
neglect than existed even in London. We need not go into the 
details of the result of these inquiries. They have been given in the 
