president's address — SECTIOX I. 193 



embarrassed; and our commerce suffered severely, and its mone- 

 tary loss 1 cannot appreciate. But apart from it the Government 

 spent about £9,000 in dealing with tne outbreak, of which about 

 £1.000 was for gratuitous vaccination. Apart from this £1,000 

 (which may be said to have been expended in giving immunity 

 from smallpox to about 10,000 of the populntion of the island) 

 none of the money was spent in preventive work ; and at the end 

 of the outbreak, with the exception named, the colony was just as 

 open to the inroads of the disease, and just as unprepared to meet 

 it, as at the beginning. I am not finding fault with the spending 

 of this money : the outbreak had to be dealt with at any cost. 

 What I find fault with is that it is not thought worth while to 

 prepare beforehand, by having a definite policy in legard to the 

 prevention of preventible disease — and smallpox is eminently a 

 preventible disease. If the Vaccination Act had been duly 

 administered, and if there had been an infectious diseases hos- 

 pital at Launceston, I am convinced that £l,0ii0 — that is, £30 

 a head for the patients treated— woidd have sufficed to have 

 stamped out the disease. 



As might be expected, local boards of health are often still more 

 short-sighted than Governments. Every member of some of the 

 boards appears to think, with respect to health matters, not that 

 he is bound to protect the interests of the ratepayers in e very- 

 possible way, but in one particular way — to protect them from 

 paying a sanitary rate. I know cities, undrained cities, where the 

 yearly monetary loss, measured only by the time lost by bread- 

 winners from typhoid fever, would pay for their thorough drainage 

 in four years, and yet where nothing permanent is done to remove 

 the causes of typhoid fever ; and there are not a few places where 

 comparatively large sanitary rates are paid — I will not say are cheer- 

 fully paid, for who does pay rates cheerfully?— but paid year after 

 year to carry out the pail system, without any provision being made 

 for the disposal of household slops and the rest of the sewage, 

 where a proper system of sewerage would dispose by water carriage 

 of both the solid and liquid portions of the entire sewage, and 

 Avould need no larger a rate to pay for it. And thus not only are 

 the larger economies of life, and health, and comfort sacrificed to 

 the smaller economies of ratepaying, but the smaller economy itself 

 is sacrificed through ignorance and short-sightedness. 



On the other hand, I do not know of any health authority that 

 has fairly, manfully, and intelligently faced the whole problem of 

 the sanitation of the place and people committed to its charge 

 that has not justified its action by success that can be appraised in 

 money, as well as in the far more important successes that are 

 priceless in the way of lengthening life and increasing comfort and 

 lessening pain and suffering. I hold that business matters in 

 which monetary profit and loss are the main concern are best left 

 to private undertaking ; but in health matters the standard of 



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