74 The Public Health. [Jan., 



communities in which they occur. All that is sacred in the obligations 

 of one man to another, all that is prudent in the economy of every- 

 day life urges, upon our legislators, our corporations, and our people 

 the necessity of an honest, energetic, and earnest determination, 

 that the terrible blot of thousands being annually carried off by 

 preventive diseases should no longer disgrace at once our boasted 

 Christianity and civilization. 



We have received a letter from Mr. George Greaves, M.E.C.S., an active 

 sanitarian in Manchester, from which we publish (with his permission) the 

 following extracts : — 



" Manchesteb, Nov. 23, 1866. 



"Permit me to thank you for the very vigorous expose of the sanitary 

 abominations of Manchester made in the last number of your Journal. If 

 anything would bring the Authorities to a sense of their duty, such writing 

 would. But I fear the case is a hopeless one,* and that while the present 

 regime lasts we must continue to breathe an atmosphere more or less loaded 

 with the emanations from feculent matter, in various stages of decomposition. 

 Thanks to our good water-supply — the one sanitary benefit conferred upon us by 

 the Corporation — we have escaped Cholera. This fact was cited by the Town- 

 Clerk at one of the meetings of the recent Social Science Congress, to prove 

 that our midden-system is not injurious to health. It would almost have been 

 better for us, in the end, if we had had a smart epidemic of Cholera. The deaths 

 from Fever (chiefly Typhus) have in the two last weeks been 20 and 22, and 

 our death-rate last week was one death higher than that of Liverpool." , 



These statements afford striking confirmation of the views expressed by the 

 author of the above article ; and moreover, we suspect that if the cause of the 

 Cholera outbreak in Liverpool could be traced, it would be found to be in some 

 way connected with the water-supply. That has been (until the recent floods) 

 notoriously deficient, and in a Report published by Mr. Duncan, the Liverpool 

 Water Engineer, in July last, about the time of the outbreak of Cholera, he said : 

 " The Committee are aware that the water now at command is insufficient to 

 admit of its being kept constantly on. Thirty gallons per person per day are 

 not considered more than enough for each person, of the entire population. At 

 the present time we are short of that quantity by about 33 per cent. ; and I may 

 add that, on a very recent occasion, evidence was given by an authority to the 

 effect that to the scarcity of water have been traced demoralization, disease, 

 and death." 



In the same Eeport, he says of three wells, two of which are situated in 

 the town (Water Street, Hotham Street, and Soho) : " The waters of these 

 wells are hard, inferior in quality, costly in obtaining, compared with those of 

 others, and would not be used, did not necessity compel." 



During the existence of Cholera, suspicion fell upon those wells. They 

 were permanently closed, and when it was attempted to raise a discussion ou 

 the cause of their discontinuance, silence was the order of the day ; but 

 recently again there was a Eeport from Mr. Duncan, jDublished in November, 



* Mr. Greaves does not refer to Salford. 



