586 On Sanitary Reform. [ 0 < 5 tober, 
By dint of such regulations, to which the world will ulti- 
mately be driven, the race will be ennobled, and there will 
be no weaklings produced to be trodden down in the 
“ struggle for existence.” 
III. ON SANITARY REFORM. 
By Rev. S. Barber. 
HETHER the present system of appointing Medical 
\ryr Officers to Public Boards is the only practicable 
one, or not, we need not now discuss, but 1 will 
merely remark that it would not be easy to conceive of a 
worse, the evils that attach themselves to it being unmis- 
takable — “ gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Two 
cases are in my mind as I write : one, that of a medical 
man who has, for some extraordinary crotchet, systematically 
opposed the efforts of the more intelligent inhabitants of the 
town to procure the sewering of a place of nearly 10,000 
population (still unsewered) ; the other, that of an officer of 
a Local Board who is a notorious drunkard, and shamefully 
ill-treats his own child. It may possibly be said that such 
cases are quite exceptional, and that every effort is made to 
ensure satisfactory appointments. However this may be, to 
pass to another point, it can hardly be disputed that the 
selecting for Officer of Public Health one who has a personal 
interest in the continuance of disease is not a rational selec- 
tion. We may ask, How is the income of a medical man 
to be estimated except by reference to his receipts, — in other 
words, the cases of sickness upon his books ? And if any 
diminution of the number of such cases represents a dimi- 
nution of the capitalised value of his medical goodwill, such 
decrease means so much pecuniary loss to the doCtor. 
Clearly, then, it is at once irrational and adverse to the 
interests of the public to appoint, as Medical Officer to a 
Public Board, a physician in practice in the district presided 
over by such Board ; for if in his public position he has 
proved himself energetic and successful in the improvement 
