140 



NA TURE 



\Dec. 1 1, 1884 



by the Institute of British Architects in connection with this 

 part of the Exhibition, and especially to that held in the last 

 days of the ENhibition by the Guild of numbers. This I call 

 your attention to because there is good reason to hope that out 

 of this will spring an organisation, and I trust a legislation, 

 which will, perhaps, do more towards the preservation of health 

 and the saving of life than most of the much more pretentious 

 forms of legislation which we must contemplate in the near 

 future. The Exhibition will, in virtue of the organisation likely 

 to follow from this conference, become the means of drawing toge 

 ther all those scattered forces which have for some time tended in 

 the direction of a great improved regulation of the sanitary 

 condition of our houses : a force, however, which, up to that 

 moment, there seemed but little hope of being able so early and 

 so practically to organise. I feel a peculiar interest in this 

 subject, for I have now for several years, as Chairman of the 

 National Health Society, and in connection with the Sanitary 

 Section of the British Medical Association, occupied myself 

 with collecting the facts and figures which demonstrate the urgent 

 necessity of improved legislation for the safeguarding of the 

 sanitary construction of our houses, and the improved education 

 and registration of those builders and plumbers to whom we 

 intrust that constniction. I read on this occasion at the opening 

 of the Congress a paper which I had prepared three years before, 

 and which, in fact, I have in various forms presented to several 

 professional and lay bodies, with the view of forming and gaug- 

 ing public opinion on the subject. I shall venture to put before 

 you here now only the conclusions which I laid before this Con- 

 ference, which practically and in principle received their approval, 

 and which will thus, I hope, have an earlier chance of finding 

 their way into the statute-book. They have the object of 

 strengthening our statute law as to drainage and plumbing. I 

 desire to enlist the aid of the Society of Arts in bringing into 

 legal operation, as one result of the International Exhibition, 

 the proposals which will be found in the Report of the Con- 

 ference, of substituting sanitary for insanitary houses. 

 First as regards drainage itself: — 



(1) Rural authorities should have the same powers as are now 

 possessed by urban authorities. In the suburbs of towns, just 

 outside the municipal boundaries, thousands of houses are spring- 

 ing up without any sanitary supervision whatever. The rural 

 authority is, perhaps, unaware of the evil, or is, at any rate, care- 

 less about it until the houses are erected ; and their opportunity 

 of making by-laws which can control such houses is then lost. 



(2) It would be well that the requirements of the Model By- 

 Laws as to New Buildings issued by the Local Government 

 Board should be incorporated in a Building Act which should 

 be forthwith passed, and be of general application throughout 

 the country. 



(3) The plumbing and drainage of all buildings, public and 

 private, should be executed in accordance with plans and speci- 

 fications previously approved in writing by the local authority. 



(4) No drainage-work should be allowed to be covered or 

 concealed in any way, until it had been examined and passed by 

 the surveyor. 



(4A) The efficiency of all drains should be tested by the pep- 

 permint or some other test before they are passed ; and it should 

 be a rule that, wherever possible, drain-pipes should be kept 

 from view only by boarding which can be readily removed. 



(5) No new house should be allowed to be inhabited until it 

 had been passed and certified by the surveyor, and a plan of the 

 system of drainage should be appended in every case to the 

 lease or other document for the letting of the house. 



As regards the plumbers, I suggest that — 



(6) The names and addresses of all plumbers should be regis- 

 tered by the local authority, and no plumber should be able to 

 carry on his trade until he had been so registered, and had 

 received a license from the local authority. 



(7) Before the license is granted to him the plumber should 

 attend personally at the office of the local authority, for ex- 

 amination as to his qualification as a plumber. 



(8) Such licenses should be renewed from year to year, and 

 their continuance should depend upon the good behaviour of, 

 and the return of the work done by, the licensee. 



(9) The names of all licensed plumbers should be publicly 

 advertised once a year by the local authority. 



The result of this Conference will live. Before long, I think 

 we may promise ourselves, we shall see, as one result of this 

 Exhibition, an active movement set on foot by which we 

 shall henceforth be enabled to train skilled and educated work- 



men, and to ascertain by suitable tests their efficiency, and 

 by which we shall be enabled to protect our artisans and our- 

 selves from occupying houses which have been built with a total 

 disregard or flagrant defiance of the first principles of sanitary 

 construction, and of the conditions which we all know to be 

 primarily essential to healthy occupation. 



The Health Laboratories. — I pass to the laboratories. It did 

 not at first, I thin];, appear evident to some of the members of 

 our Council how close was the connection between the work 

 to be carried on in these laboratories and the public health. 

 Happily, however, that feeling soon gave way to one of ac- 

 quiescence in the proposition which I made for the establishment 

 of these laboratories, and, since, a closer examination of the sub- 

 ject has, I think, 'convinced every one that it is to establishments 

 of research and of study, such as those over which Mr. Watson 

 Cheyne and Prof. Corfield presided, that we must look for the 

 most solid foundations for future progress in solving the highest 

 problems connected with the preservation of health ; and that 

 no part of the Exhibition fulfilled a higher purpose, and to none 

 can we look with more assured hope in the future, than to these 

 departments of the Exhibition. A description of the laboratories 

 appears in the official catalogue, and I shall not occupy your 

 time with any description of them. 



At the Hygienic Laboratory, in its chemical and physical de- 

 partments, the public were not merely given the opportunity of 

 seeing hygienic analyses of various kinds going on, and of having 

 them explained to them either by Prof. Corfield or his assistants, 

 individually or in the form of ponulir demonstrations — of which 

 a considerable number were given, chiefly by the senior assistant, 

 Mr. C. E. Cassall, during the time the Exhibition was open — 

 but they also had the opportunity of seeing the ordinary working 

 of su-h a laboratory, from the fact that Prof. Corfield was able 

 to utilise this laboratory for his students. A class of about forty 

 teachers, selected by the Science and Art Department from 

 schools in all parts of the country, attended a course of lectures 

 given by him at the Normal School of Science, and at the same 

 time worked in batches in the hygienic laboratory at the Health 

 Exhibition, and thus the public were enabled to form an idea of 

 what such a laboratory is in full working order : and, indeed, 

 during the whole time that the Exhibition was open after the 

 above-mentioned class had dispersed, there were pupils who 

 worked in the laboratory. 



In a complete hygienic laboratory there should be a separate 

 part set aside for physical experiments relating to hygienic ap- 

 pliances ; but in this laboratory there was barely space for the 

 chemical work to be carried on, and even the microscopical 

 work could only be prosecuted to a limited extent, insomuch 

 that the class of teachers went through their course of micro- 

 scopy relating to hygiene in the plrjsical laboratory at the Nor- 

 mal School, and the absence of physical appliances was replaced, 

 as far as it couli be, by demonstrations given by Prof. Corfield 

 at the sanitary and insanitary houses. 



As regards the Biological Laboratory, it is sufficient for my 

 purpose to-night to remind you that in it Mr. Cheyne, the 

 worthy pupil of Sir Joseph Lister, who acted as chairman of 

 the Laboratory Sub-Committee, showed by practical working, 

 and by collections such as had never before been seen in this 

 country with the same completeness, the refined methods of re- 

 search and of teaching by which we are enabled to study the 

 life-history and the habits, the development and the means of 

 arresting the development, of those minute organisms whieh 

 modern science has shown to be prime factors in the causation 

 «if a great proportion of the most fatal diseases which afflict our 

 flocks and herds, which decimate mankind, and which attack 

 those plants and animals which constitute the staple of our food- 

 supplies. Mr. Cheyne's demonstrations were eagerly followed 

 by health students from all parts of the kingdom. A certain 

 number of tables were set apart for study and research, and 

 these were fully occupied from the first to the last days that the 

 Exhibition was open. In Dr. Corfield's laboratory was col- 

 lected the apparatus for that kind of instruction in the chemical 

 and physical examination of soil, air, water, food, clothing, and 

 materials of house construction, which are essential elements in 

 the education of that great army of medical officers of health 

 who are appointed now under existing Acts of Parliament to 

 watch over the health interests of the community. It is very 

 well known, however, that a large majority of those gentlemen 

 have not this necessary instruction, and that at the present 

 moment there does not exist in this country any adequate means 

 for giving such instruction. There are in England M02 medical 



