602 The Public Health. [Oct., 



The address was delivered extemporaneously. He began by 

 describing man as tbe only animal that surrounded himself with 

 filth and dirt, and by his own neglect shortened those days of 

 existence which his Creator intended him to enjoy. He dwelt with 

 great energy on the necessity of all classes, high as well as low, 

 seeking to surround themselves with an atmosphere of pure air. 

 He showed the dreadful effects of this neglect by the long list of 

 preventable diseases which carried off people in England and Ireland, 

 and which amounted to a number of not less than 120,000 persons 

 annually in the three kingdoms. He showed how the nouses of the 

 rich as well as the poor were poisoned by the neglect of drainage 

 and ventilation. He then drew attention to the mortality of 

 hospitals as an illustration of the danger of impure atmospheres. 

 He said the mortality of infants and mothers in lying-in hospitals 

 was seven times as great as out of hospitals. He adduced 

 statistics to show that in medical and surgical hospitals the death 

 was much greater than in the humblest homes. He brought 

 forward the experience of the American war in favour of the 

 treatment of soldiers in camps and in temporary hospitals, as 

 compared with the more costly and permanent kinds of hospitals. 

 He then advocated the system of building Village Hospitals, in 

 which not more than one or two cases should be treated in the 

 same room. The subject of Smallpox was next referred to ; and 

 the fact alluded to, that 25,000 people had died of smallpox in 

 the United Kingdom during the past four years. He considered 

 this a disgrace to the intelligence and humanity of the country. 

 He was afraid that we were barbarous enough to admire more those 

 who destroyed the lives of our fellow-creatures than those who 

 saved them. France had erected a monument to the memory of 

 Jenner, that greeted every Englishman when he planted foot on 

 her shores; and England had once set up a statue to Jenner, and 

 placed it with her military heroes in Trafalgar Square, but had 

 now allowed it to be cast away nobody knows where. No wonder 

 that the Government which could thus insult the memory of Jenner, 

 should allow the country to be smitten with the disease he had 

 shown them how to prevent. 



The remainder of Tuesday was employed in the discussion of 

 the sanitary condition of Belfast. From two papers that were read, 

 one by Dr. Browne and the other by Mr. Penworth, both of 

 Belfast, it appears that this town is much in need of sanitary im- 

 provement. It appears that the death-rate was last year from 30 

 to 33 in the thousand. Accurate statistics cannot be got in Ireland, 

 for reasons that have already been referred to in this report. The 

 water is bad, the drainage is defective, the houses are overcrowded, 

 the graveyards are full ; and thus Belfast offers one of the finest fields 

 in the United Kingdom for the exertion of sanitary philanthropy. 



