388 Original Articles. [July, 



The report of the commission gives a list of the cases in which it 

 has interfered, and we find that in 1857 there were 492, of which 369 

 were adjusted amicahly, and the remaining ones referred to courts of 

 justice; in 1858, 512 cases, whereof 355 pleasantly terminated; and 

 in 1859, 641 cases, of which 373 were amicably settled ; thus it 

 appears that the Commission finds its reformatory labours extending 

 and becoming more and more difficult in execution. 



Let us now turn again to our home records of a more recent date, 

 and we shall find that although our Boards and Committees of Health 

 have been unremitting in their exertions to suppress the unhealthy 

 and demoralizing conditions of the poorer classes, yet their extended 

 inquiries have revealed a state of things almost too repulsive to be 

 transferred from the cold and formal reports of medical officers 

 intended only for the guidance of local boards, to the pages of a 

 Journal destined for the general reader. 



But in the fulfilment of our task, it is absolutely necessary that we 

 should extract a few of the more flagrant cases of neglect and igno- 

 rance, often bordering upon crime, which, as we have already stated, 

 are sapping the very foundations of our social system and converting 

 our crowded cities into hotbeds for the reception of epidemic diseases. 



In his report for August, 1864, Dr. Gairdner, the medical officer of 

 Glasgow, tells us that he sometimes feels completely helpless when he 

 " sees diseases, as measles, hooping-cough, and scarlet fever, running 

 riot in the houses of the poor ;" he feels that, in most instances, nothing 

 can be done beyond a general instruction to open the windows, and 

 attend, if possible, to cleanliness. He further states that he has found 

 provisions publicly sold from infected apartments, instancing a case 

 where " a woman with the eruption of smallpox actually on her hands, 

 was found selling sweetmeats to the children of a school in her neigh- 

 bourhood ! " If such a story had been told in some romance of 

 1 The Plague of London,' or if it had found its way into ' The Mys- 

 teries of Paris,' it would not have been out of place ; but it is enough 

 to chill the blood in one's veins to read it as an actual fact in the 

 report of a medical officer of health in 1864. 



And what is the remedy for such a state of moral darkness ? Dr. 

 Gairdner tells us that the law is incapable of dissipating it, and that 

 " the spread of epidemic disease among children can hardly be met 

 otherwise than by the gradual diffusion of enlightenment, and by the 

 improved habits which, it is to be hoped, may arise from the remodel- 

 ing of the dwellings of the poor over a long course of years." 



Even the attempt to prevent the overcrowding of those dens which 

 are at present used as dwellings for the poor is not always successful, 

 and although it is a matter for congratulation that the two infamous 

 localities referred to in a former part of this paper, " the Drygate 

 Rookery" and " Binnie's Court," are to a great extent freed from 

 epidemic fever, in consequence of sanitary improvements, yet Dr. 

 Gairdner tells us, that " in another street in the same neighbourhood 

 (in which a great deal of fever has been reported), fifty-two houses 

 have been ticketed, all of these, except four, being houses of single 

 apartments ; the proper complement of these fifty-two houses, accord- 



