August 13, 1891] 



NATURE 



345 



duced that the appointed sanitary authorities can compel 

 the changes necessary to be made ; for such changes are 

 almost always inconvenient or injurious to some, and 

 might even seem unjust to them, unless it be made quite 

 clear that they would be very beneficial to the community. 

 But my hope is that the work of this Congress may not 

 be limited to the influence which it may exercise on sani- 

 tary authorities. It will have a still better influence if it 

 will teach all people in all classes of society how much 

 everyone may do for the improvement of the sanitary 

 conditions among which he has to live. I say distinctly 

 ' all classes,' for although the heaviest penalties of insani- 

 tary arrangements fall on the poor, who are themselves 

 least able to prevent or bear them, yet no class is free 

 from their dangers or sufficiently careful to avert them. 

 Where could one find a family which has not in some of 

 its members suffered from typhoid fever or diphtheria, 

 or others of those illnesses which are especially called 

 * preventable diseases ' ? Where is there a family m which 

 it might not be asked, 'If preventable, why not pre- 

 vented ? ' I would add that the questions before the 

 Congress, and in which all should take a personal interest, 

 do not relate only to the prevention of death or of serious 

 diseases, but to the maintenance of the conditions in 

 which the greatest working power may be sustained." 



The Times, in a leading article on the Prince's address, 

 points out one very important practical matter in which 

 we lag far behind many foreign countries, and which may 

 serve as an excellent illustration of the Prince's words 

 about inconvenience or apparent injustice to individuals. 

 " The weak point of English sanitary law is in respect of 

 regulations for the slaughter of animals. In London, for 

 example, slaughterhouses are small private establish- 

 ments, often situate up little alleys or courts, surrounded 

 by dwelling-houses, and not only destitute of many con- 

 veniences which they should possess, but also affording 

 great facilities for the slaughter of diseased animals, and 

 for the distiibution of their flesh as food. In many 

 Continental cities public abattoirs have been established 

 upon a large scale, and all private slaughtering is for- 

 bidden. At these abattoirs there is an abundance of 

 space, of air, of light ; there is an excellent water supply ; 

 and the slaughtering is conducted under the supervision 

 of officials, governed by rules which not only protect 

 cattle against unnecessary cruelty or ill-usage, but which 

 provide for the systematic inspection of meat before it is 

 permitted to be sold. We shall certainly hear a good 

 deal, during the sitting of the Congress, as to the import- 

 ance of preventing the consumption of the flesh of tuber- 

 culous animals ; but this, however important it may be, 

 can never be done while the innumerable small private 

 slaughterhouses are suffered to remain." 



At the conclusion of the Prince's address, speeches 

 were delivered by representatives of France, Italy, 

 Austria-Hungary, Saxony, and Prussia. It is pleasing 

 to record that all bore high tribute to the part which has 

 been played by England in the promotion of measures 

 calculated to preserve and improve the public health, j 

 On this point. Dr. Brouardel (France) was indeed specially 

 emphatic : — 



"In the year 1837, the year of the coronation 

 of Her Gracious Majesty, appeared the Act which 

 rendered obligatory the registration of deaths. This 

 Act inaugurated the era of administrative reforms con- 

 cerning the public health which our valued colleague of 

 the Local Government Board has rightly called ' the 

 Victorian era,' This Act did not long remain alone. 

 Under the impulse given by two of your most illustrious 

 patriots, William Farr and Edwin Chadwick, you have 

 organized a system of registration of the causes of 

 diseases and of deaths. Certain important cities, before 

 the law made it obligatory, obtained supplies of water 

 beyond all suspicion of pollution, and adopted systems 

 of removal of foul water and waste matters. In these 



NO. I 137, VOL. 44] 



cities, whose action cannot be too much praised, the sick- 

 ness and death rates diminished rapidly ; this furnished 

 the necessary proof it was time for reform. Twenty 

 years ago the Local Government Board was established, 

 and in 1875 had submitted to Parliament a Bill for the 

 protection of the public health. During its discussion in 

 Parliament one of your greatest Ministers (Disraeli) pro- 

 nounced in the House of Commons these memorable 

 words, which should be repeated in all countries and in 

 all Parliaments : ' The public health is the foundation on 

 which repose the happiness of the people and the power of 

 a country. The care of thepublic health is the firstduty of a 

 statesman.' Since this, each year you have made fresh 

 improvements in your sanitary laws ; if in your eyes they 

 are not perfect, in the eyes of the nations who surround 

 you they are an ideal towards which all their most ardent 

 aspirations tend. It is your example they invoke when 

 they claim from the public authorities the powers neces- 

 sary to oppose epidemics, to combat the scourges which 

 decimate their populations. You have taken the first 

 rank in the art for formulating laws for the protection of 

 health ; this is not all that you have done in the domain 

 of hygiene. Among the diseases wliich one can properly 

 term pestilential, there are, thanks to the work of the 

 hygienists of all countries, certain ones which from the 

 present time may be considered as preventable : such are 

 smallpox, typhoid fever, dysentery, and cholera. For 

 one of these, the most terrible, the immunity conferred by 

 vaccination is absolute. The person upon whom this 

 immunity is conferred can pass through the most severe 

 epidemics, and expose himself to all sources of contagion 

 without being affected. Who is it who thus preserves 

 from death, from blindness, from infirmity, millions of 

 human beings of all countries and of all races.' On May 

 18, 1796, a date which might well be the date of a great 

 battle, Jenner inoculated with vaccine matter by means 

 of two superficial incisions, the youth James Phipps. 

 Protection against small-pox belongs to you ; the world will 

 be to you for ever obliged. Let us consider two other 

 epidemic diseases. Is it possible to establish the conditions 

 ofpropagationof typhoid fever without quoting the names of 

 Budd or of Murchison ? I am aware that in 1855 Dr. 

 Michel de Chaunwnt had for the town in which he lived 

 experimentally established the role played by drinking- 

 water in the propagation of this disease. Unhappily, 

 public opinion was not prepared, and his discovery was 

 not listened to. In the work which we are considering, 

 the efforts of the English school were most fruitful. May 

 I recall the fact that it was the epidemic of cholera in 

 1866 in England, which gave birth to the theory of its 

 propagation by drinking-water.-' Was it not at that date 

 that, under the influence of your hygienists, the Lords of 

 the Privy Council issued an order formulating the laws of 

 prevention which we adopt to-day .' Certain it is that 

 even in England these discoveries have not immediately 

 borne all their fruit. The anti-vaccination leagues are 

 not yet dead. Proofs accumulated during a century have 

 not sufficed to cure that mental blindness which is con- 

 genial. . . . Can France be represented in a Con- 

 gress of Hygiene without recalling the name of M. 

 Pasteur 1 For centuries we have asserted that epi- 

 demic diseases were propagated by means of contact, 

 by the air, by the effluvia, by miasmata. The idea 

 of morbific germs, if not the name, is even found in 

 the works of Hippocrates, but in what an uncertain sense. 

 The theory of contagion has passed from century to 

 century with strange modifications ; the uncertainty of 

 the methods of research and the difficulties of observation 

 bound up together truth and error. It remained for 

 Pasteur to prove the existence of these germs, their form, 

 their life, their mode of action, and by their attenuation 

 to solve the problem of immunity. Thanks to his work, and 

 thanks to those of his pupils, realities have succeeded to 

 contingent possibilities. We know some of our enemies. 



