A QUESTION OF SANITATION 45 



improved health. Anti-fly campaigns should prove 

 the same, for the conditions are similar, and the results 

 to be expected should also be the same. But in 

 England, at all events, there exists already the means 

 of dealing with fly-breeding places regularly, for there 

 is in every town, and in most villages, an efficient 

 sanitary organisation ; and it is in the towns and villages 

 that there are more children, more flies, more disease. 

 But the danger of the fly-breeding places does not 

 seem to have been realised, and the manure in many 

 places is not removed sufficiently regularly nor carefully. 

 In many urban and rural districts in Great Britain 

 there are inspectors of nuisances, and these have powers 

 to enforce the regular and complete removal and de- 

 struction or disposal of manure, refuse, and collections 

 of garbage which serve as fly-breeding places; and if 

 the owners of fly-infested premises do not or cannot 

 perform the task of fly-reduction, the local sanitary 

 authority can be forced to do it. 



But flies still exist in many towns and villages 

 because neither the public nor the local inspectors 

 realise their danger ; and because the laws and by-laws 

 are not therefore enforced in their entirety. The result 

 is flies, disease, and death. But a more careful adminis- 

 tration and a better organisation should give fewer 

 flies, less disease, and a falling death-rate ; and these 

 at a very slightly increased cost or raising of the rates. 



Just before this chapter was written, the writer had 

 occasion to visit one of the cities of South Wales to 

 make some inquiries concerning an infantile disease 

 which had broken out there. One of the staff of the 

 health office happened to mention that as the spring 

 had been warm and dry an increase in the infantile 

 mortality was soon to be expected. We visited some 

 4* 



