178 REPORT— 1864. 



resort to the cui'ative means aflbrded by the hospitals ; but Mr. Tite called attention 

 to the fact, that the children of the Parisians were habitually sent away from home, 

 and thus tended to diminish the rate of mortality in the city ; whilst the children of 

 Londoners were kept at home to live or to die, as the case might be. The deaths 

 that were registered in the Paris hospitals were, however, more than those which 

 took place in the hospitals of London, not only comparatively, but positively ; and 

 attention was called to the fact that, out of the total number of births in the year 

 1862, as many as 6522 out of 52,.312 took place in the public hospitals of Paris. 

 The eliect of the greater facilities that were thus given to the indulgence of the 

 passions, by the assistance that was offered to the confinement of women in that 

 city, was also alluded to ; and the increased mortality that was created was made 

 the subj ect of some remark. 



Mr. Tite thought that much of the increased mortality that he showed to pre- 

 vail in Paris over London was to be attributed to the overcrowding that was 

 obsei-vable in the former city ; to the bad hygienic conditions of the houses, as far 

 as regarded their ventilation, the removal oi the refuse, and the water-supply ; and 

 to the bad laying-out of the town generally. It appeared that in Paris as many as 

 35'17 persons lived imder the same roof, whereas in London the average number 

 was only 7'72 ; and everything that was going on in the former city tended to 

 increase the proportion of the inhabitants to the house-room. As to the hygienic 

 conditions of the houses, Mr. Tite observed that it was by no means rare to find 

 that the houses in the best quarters of Paris were erected with a fi-ont building 

 towards the street of 14 metres high, which was only separated from a back build- 

 ing by a court-yard of 6 metres wide, and the air of the inhabitants of the latter 

 was forced to be renewed in this well. The habits of the best classes were, more- 

 over, such as to render this inconvenience from the want of ventilation more 

 injurious; and "the ■villainous smells" that could be distinctly perceived in all 

 parts of the city were attributed to the deficient notions that prevailed in this respect, 

 and to the deficient manner in which the service of the town was performed in 

 respect to the removal of the house-refuse. The streets of Paris were also very 

 badly planned ; and though much had been done to improve the state of things thus 

 pointed out of late, yet much remained to be done before Paris could compare 

 with London in this respect. The streets in the former city were crooked, narrow, 

 and confined, and the circulation of air in them was very much impeded. Mr. 

 Tite thought that, in fact, the number of people that crowded together imder the 

 same roof, and the bad state of the houses themselves, were the main causes of the 

 increased rate of mortality observable in Paris. 



The state of the sewerage and the water-supply of Paris were also said to be 

 very deficient. Thus, it was calculated that there were above 700 kilometres of 

 streets in Paris, but there was not half that length of streets sewered ; and in 

 Paris the sewers had very different functions to perform than they had in London, 

 as they were designed to carry off from the former city only the rain-water and 

 some portion of the liquid sewage, whereas, in the latter, they conveyed away 

 from the householder all the house-refuse and the rain-water indiscriminately. 

 There had been executed a well-devised scheme for discharging the sewage on the 

 northern side of the Seine, which conducted the waters to the neighbourhood of 

 Asnieres ; but this did not deal with the sewerage of the islands, nor did it relieve 

 the river from the impurities that it received from the sewerage of the south side, 

 which, in fact, was poured into the Seine just above the intake of the water-works 

 of Chaillot. The error that the French engineers had committed in designing 

 their system of sewers was in limiting them to the fimctions of drains, instead of 

 making them serve both as drains and sewers. As to the water-works in Paris, 

 their insufficiency was proved by the fact that there were only about 25,000 sub- 

 scribers out of 50,000 householders ; and by the fact that the water was, in the 

 majority of cases, only delivered on the level of the ground floor. The peculiar 

 tenm'e of the French houses, indeed, opposed the introduction of the water to the 

 various flats, or stories, that are let out to distinct and separate families. The sup- 

 ply of water in Paris was at present imdergoing a radical change, but it was still 

 very much behind the system that prevailed in London. 



But, with all the causes that give rise to the increased mortality of Pai-is over 



