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Sanitary Reform and its Vagaries : 
[August, 
V. SANITARY REFORM AND ITS VAGARIES: 
THE SANITARY INSTITUTE OF GREAT 
BRITAIN. 
S T being, apparently, an established fadt that these islands 
are sadly under-peopled, — that we have food without 
eaters, work without workers, and space without occu- 
pants, — we are as a nation greatly exercised on the question 
of diminishing the death-rate. We have accordingly a 
movement among us known as “ Sanitary Reform ” — a 
movement boasting its statesmen ranging in type from the 
Conservative enunciator of “ Sanitas sanitatum et omnia 
sanitas ” to the Whig doctrinaire ; its savans and — let it be 
whispered in confidence — its charlatans also. The latter 
are chiefly to be congratulated. Science is to them not “ the 
high, the heavenly goddess,” but the sturdy mule on which 
they ride to fame and fortune. 
Leaving these worthies for a time, let us ask what our 
speeches and our ledtures at the Sanitary Institute, our 
Commissions, and our letters to the “ Times ” have really 
brought about ? We know little more concerning either the 
treatment or the prevention of cholera than when it first 
invaded us. Medical authorities of repute are beginning to 
doubt whether the immunity from Oriental plague which we 
have enjoyed for the last two centuries is due to our own 
skill and wisdom or to circumstances equally beyond our 
knowledge and our control. The very disease which we 
boasted of having overcome has recruited its strength, and 
returns upon us every few years in epidemic proportions, 
revealing the following curious case ; — an evil increasing 
pari passu — if not faster — with its remedy. The mountains 
have certainly not brought forth a Megatherium. 
But there is in Sanitary Reform and its upholders a cer- 
tain degree of inconsistency, often overlooked. War is 
waged against “ zymotic disease ” only. Fevers, cholera, 
small-pox, diphtheria, and their allies are to be rooted out 
by any and every means. But does any Sanitary Reformer 
ever class among preventible diseases that long train of 
neuroses — affedtions of the nervous system — which culminate 
in madness, paralysis, apoplexy ? Does any Institute ask 
earnestly whether it be true that such ailments are increasing 
