1867.] Manchester: its Sanitary and Social State. 209 



double mode of causation. The effluvia from living human bodies, 

 when concentrated, and those also probably from recent excrement, 

 generate Typhus, while Typhoid fever is produced by the emana- 

 tions from decomposing animal matters. It has been shown that in 

 the fever-haunts of Manchester, both these causes are in operation. 



It has thus been shown how the Corporation of Manchester have 

 performed the duty of removing the predisposing causes of disease. 

 Let us now see what they have done in the actual presence of 

 disease, fostered by their own negligence. During the last three 

 years, continued fever has been epidemic in Manchester, and al- 

 though during the winter just passed away, it has not been quite 

 so prevalent as in the previous one, yet for many weeks in succes- 

 sion, the weekly average of new cases under public treatment has 

 not been less than eighty, to which must be added nearly as many 

 more met with in private practice.* 



It might, therefore, have been expected that the municipal 

 authorities would be on the alert, especially since their acquisition 

 of increased powers and greater responsibilities under the Sanitary 

 Act of 1866. How have they acted in these altered circumsta aces ? 

 Let one instance answer the question. 



Early in December last, fever broke out in a house situated in 

 Eiga Street, a short and rather narrow street in the older part of 

 Hulme. The whole family, consisting of six persons, were removed 

 to the Chorlton Union hospital. Three days after the removal of 

 the last of them, the house was visited by the writer of this article. 

 He found the house closely shut up, and there was no evidence 

 of any attempt to cleanse or disinfect it. It was excessively dirty, 

 the floors and walls almost black with filth. The only furniture 

 to be seen was an old straw palliasse, and a quantity of cotton 

 flocks, lying loose in a corner of one of the two bed-rooms. The 

 remainder of the furniture had been taken under a distraint for 

 rent, after the fever had made its appearance in the house. It had, 

 of course, been taken to a broker's shop, and the various articles, 

 impregnated as they were with the poison of typhus, had most 

 probably been sold, and the infection thus spread abroad through 

 the city. Three days later, the house was in the same unpurified 

 state, excepting that the windows had, at the suggestion of the 

 writer, been left open. These facts were reported to the Chorlton 

 guardians, at their meeting on January 4th, and a copy of the 



* From the weekly returns of the Sanitary Association, it appears that in the 

 eight weeks ending February 23rd of this year, 660 new cases of fever occurred 

 in public practice in Manchester and Salford, an average of 83 per week. In the 

 same period in 1866 the number was 1049, or 131 weekly. The deaths in the two 

 periods respectively were 137 and 200. The people of the two towns were there- 

 fore, in the first two months of the present year, dying at the rate of nearly 900 

 per annum of a disease which ought not to exist, and those who so died were the 

 most valuable members of society. 



vol. rv. . , p 



