1885 .] The Limits of Sanitary Reform. 149 
“ shattered the marble image of Materialism,” but broken 
down a partition-wall which barred out invisible agencies 
from interference in our world ? In that case it strikes me 
that the refutation of Materialism has cost us far too dear. 
V. THE LIMITS OF SANITARY REFORM. 
S YGIENE, or as we Britons prefer to call it “ Sanitary 
Reform,” is of far wider scope than we commonly 
suppose. If fairly studied it will be seen to involve 
something much more than a “ policy of sewage,” — some- 
thing weightier than the appointment of costly commissions, 
Royal or Parliamentary, the purification of rivers, and the 
suppression of a few desultory nuisances. It includes war 
against every custom, every institution which tends to 
debilitate our population, whether it be of a diredt or an 
indirect nature. Taking its stand on the old axiom “ Salus 
populi suprema est lex,” it claims precedence alike over the 
dogmas of political economy and over the dictates of political 
party. “ Direct or indirect ” we say. The man who shoots 
down or stabs his neighbour in the street does ill ; but the 
man who intentionally, and as a matter of business, gra- 
dually undermines the health of his neighbour, does still 
worse. For the man suddenly and diredtly murdered does 
not, on that account, necessarily leave an enfeebled, debili- 
tated posterity ; but the man who (say) in the third decade 
of his life succumbs to unsanitary influences, very often 
leaves to his children an inheritance of what is absurdly 
called “ delicacy.” Hence the effects of indirect murder are 
progressively cumulative, — a continual supply of the 
“ unfittest ” being thus provided that they may be trodden 
down in the struggle for existence. 
We have made war, and with a certain measure of suc- 
cess, against typhoid fever, dysentery, scarlatina, cholera, 
and other diseases comparable to the diredt homicide. But 
what have we done against pulmonary consumption, scrofula, 
heart and brain diseases, Bright’s disease, — in short against 
all those maladies which, like the indirect murderer, slowly 
prostrate their vidtim, giving him the opportunity to procreate 
