1868. | The Public Health. 437 
It has appeared good to Messrs. Dixon, Kennard, and Goldney, 
Members of the House of Commons, to propose a Bill to amend 
‘The Act for preventing the Adulteration of Articles of Food and 
Drink, 1860.’ Whether the new powers to be given of fining 
and imprisoning persons who sell adulterated food, and which are 
also extended to drugs, will galvanize the old Act into life may be 
questionable. The effort, however, is a good one, and deserves to 
be encouraged. We miss from this Bill the authoritative declara- 
tion, “Thou shalt not commit adulteration.” Like all other per- 
missive Acts, it gives the impression that, provided the authorities 
do not appoint analysts, and do not analyze the food, it is a man’s 
privilege to adulterate. 
Another sanitary Bill has also been brought into Parliament by 
Messrs. Clive, Golding, Newton, and Wyld, entitled ‘A Bill to make 
better Provision for facilitating and regulating the Supply of Pure 
Water in Cities, Towns, and Districts throughout the United King- 
dom of Great Britain and Ireland. The clauses of the Bill will 
give power to persons to require that every company supplying 
water to a district shall supply every house in that district, and also 
to persons to require that landlords require the said companies to 
supply all dwelling-houses and tenements occupied by human beings 
with water. 
These Bills are undoubtedly efforts in the right direction, but 
they are a part of the everlasting tinkering that 1s going on about 
all our sanitary legislation. It is rotten and leaking in every direc- 
tion, and nothing but a sound foundation will ever give it security 
or value. 
Scornanp.—The ‘Scotsman’ newspaper has recently had a 
series of articles on the question, “Is the Rate of Mortality In- 
creasing?” They were very ably written, and by a person who 
evidently has access to the freshest and most reliable information, 
and whose acquaintance with the sanitary literature of the last 
thirty years is both extensive and varied. Having read the articles 
in question, we can scarcely feel inclined to answer the author’s 
question in the affirmative. It would be one of the greatest slurs 
that could possibly be cast upon the medical and sanitary science of 
the present day, if we were even to believe that the rate of mortality 
is increasing. It is certain that, so far as Scotland is concerned, 
there is much difficulty on the part of the authorities to abate those 
nuisances and insanitary arrangements which result in the produc- 
tion of epidemic disease, and necessarily in the production of a high 
death-rate. In Glasgow, for instance, there is perhaps one of the 
most completely organized stafis of Sanitary Officers that can be 
found in the United Kingdom, and yet epidemic disease and a high 
rate of mortality still continue to manifest their existence in the 
community. The staff in question consists of the principal Medical 
