Edgar.—Or image of that horror?
Lear.—This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.”
Shakespeare, King Lear, Act V. Sc. 3.
[25]. Vide Appendix.—Regulations and Plans of the Building, forming part of the Institution.
[26]. In a paper read on the 2nd January last before the Academy of Sciences at Paris, by M. le Baron Charles Dupin, on the increase of savings’ banks and their influence on the Parisian population, some most startling facts are mentioned in the conclusion, showing the deplorable moral condition of a large portion of that population. “Le nombre proportionnel des indigents, au lieu d’augmenter, diminue, ainsi que celui des bâtards, mais avec lenteur déplorable; au commencement de l’époque dont nous résumons les progrès, le peuple de Paris abandonnait chaque année 205 enfants sur 1,000 nouveau nés; il n’en abandonne plus que 120: c’est beaucoup moins, et pourtant c’est cent vingt fois trop. Encore aujourd’hui, le tiers du peuple vit dans le concubinage ou dans le libertinage; un tiers de ses enfants sont bâtards; un tiers de ses morts expirent à l’hôpital ou sur le grabat du pauvre; et ni père, ni mère, ni fils, ni filles, n’ont le cœur, pour dernier tribut humain, de donner un cercueil, un linceul, au cadavre de leurs proches:—du côté des mœurs, voilà Paris, et Paris amélioré!”—It may on this point of comparison be a relief to state, the numbers who die in the workhouses in the British metropolis, do not exceed 4000 for nearly double the population, and that of these, on the average of the last ten years, not more than 293 have been so given up or abandoned as to be applicable to the public service in the schools of anatomy. The total number who are abandoned in all the hospitals of London, for that service, has not, on the average, exceeded 168 out of upwards of 2000 deaths per annum. The total number of subjects requisite for teaching in the schools of anatomy would be about 600. Notwithstanding that the prejudice against dissection has much abated, the full number deemed requisite has never been obtained of late years from all sources. In some instances, persons of education set an example by giving up their own bodies for dissection; in some other instances, the use of the remains is obtained by persuasions, and the promises of more respectful interment afterwards, than could otherwise be obtained. There are actually very few real “abandonments” by relations, the greater proportion of cases being of persons who have outlived near relations, of whom none, after due enquiry, which is always made, can be found. In respect to illegitimate births, it appears from the last parliamentary return of the number of illegitimate children born in the several counties of England (that of Mr. Rickman,) for 1833, that the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births, was in Middlesex, 1 in 38; and in Surrey 1 in 40. This was most probably an understatement, but, whatever may be the real proportions they are below any comparison with the proportions in Paris. The highest proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births given in the returns, were those of the county of Pembroke, 1 in 8; and Radnor, where it is 1 in 7. It may be important to state for the sake of the example, and in illustration of the principle, as to the comparative economy of sanitary arrangements that this excess of 7,000 miserable deaths and burials per annum in Paris, at the least, might be saved by structural sanitary arrangements, which would prevent the accumulation of human beings in winding streets, (some of which are not more than eight or nine feet wide,) under circumstances which render decency, morality, health, or contentment impossible. The whole excess of deaths, as well as the demoralization that arises from overcrowding, might in all probability be saved even by the last vote of expenditure, five millions sterling, (which, at English prices, of 100l. for a tenement for a family, would have provided improved tenements, at improved rents, for fifty thousand labourers’ families) for maintaining the war on the Arabs, or by the interest of the money expended in building the immense wall and fortifications round the dangerous population (kept “desperate,” as Jeremy Taylor expresses it, “by a too quick sense of a constant infelicity,”) which those works encircle in Paris. In a copy of a report of the medical commissioners, appointed to examine the cholera, with which I have been favoured by one distinguished member, M. Villerme, and in which I have found powerful corroborative evidence on the influence of structural arrangements on the health and moral, not to speak of the political, condition of the population; they observe, “Le fléau qui a pesé si cruellement sur la capitale s’est fait sentir d’une manière particulièrement désastreuse dans les quartiers étroits, sales et embarrassés de l’ancien Paris; n’y aurait-il pas lieu de signaler ici quelques améliorations utiles à introduire dans ces localités? Les raisons d’état ont souvent dominé les intérêts matériels des villes; autrefois les voies étroites et tortueuses appliquées même aux rues pouvait faire partie des moyens de défense à l’usage de l’état: aujourd’hui des rues larges et droites deviennent dans l’intérieur des villes un premier élément de sécurité publique autant que d’hygiène; il y a donc double avantage à favoriser dans ces conditions, soit des percements nouveaux, soit l’élargissement des voies actuelles.” They give forcible descriptions of population analogous to that found—happily in less proportions,—in the worst part of our cities, and they also attest, from the examination of the inferior population of that capital: “C’est une vérité de tous les temps, de tous les lieux, une vérité, qu’il faut redire sans cesse parceque sans cesse on l’oublie; il existe entre l’homme et tout ce qui l’entoure, de secrets liens, de mystérieux rapports dont l’influence sur lui est continuelle et profonde. Favorable, cette influence ajoute à ses forces physiques et morales, elle les develope, les conserve; nuisible, alors elle les altère, les anéantit, les tue. Mais son action n’est jamais plus redoutable que lorsqu’elle trouve à s’exercer sur une population entassée, quelle qu’elle soit d’ailleurs, et voilà pourquoi l’on observe dans certains arrondissements une mortalité plus grande; voilà pourquoi le germe des maladies s’y développe plus constamment, pourquoi la vie s’y éteint plus rapidement, enfin pourquoi l’on y compte habituellement un décès sur trente-deux habitants, quand il n’y en a qu’un sur quarante dans les autres.” They also indicate as part of the effects of the noxious physical causes the moral depravity and the predominance of bad passions which impede amendment. “Ces obstacles sont réels, ils ne sauraient être méconnus, mais qui peut douter de les voir s’affaiblir, si d’une part la classe aisée de la population, comprenant mieux les intentions de l’autorité et ses intérêts véritables, se prête plus aisément à l’action des règlements sur la propreté et la salubrité publique, et si d’une autre part l’instruction, pénétrant dans cette portion de la population qui doit une partie de ses vices et de sa misère à l’ignorance, fait naître chez elle, avec des mœurs plus pures, des habitudes plus régulières et plus en harmonie avec l’hygiène publique?” But these representations of the Medical Commissioners of Paris have not been heard by the classes appealed to, and relief is sought by the mode of “giving vent” to the dangerous passions in preference to the superior treatment recommended, of the removal of the physical circumstances by which those passions must continue to be generated. Thus it may be mentioned in illustration of the important principle of the superior economy and efficiency of structural means of prevention, that the expenditure of money on Algiers appears to have been upwards of four millions sterling per annum, during the twelve years of its occupation. The capital sunk on the permanent structural arrangements for supplying London with water being about three millions and a half, it may be safely alleged that one year’s expenditure on Algiers would have sufficed for the structural arrangements for a supply of water for the cleansing of every room, and house, and street in Paris; or on the scale of the expense of the works completed for supplying Toulouse with water, one year’s expenditure on Algiers would have sufficed to supply one hundred and fifty towns of the same size as Toulouse with the like means of healthful, and thence of moral improvement; or such a sum would have sufficed to have effected for ever the “percements et enlargissements des voies actuelles,” and thence to have advanced the health and achieved the comparative security of four or five such cities as Lyons. One year’s cost of any one regiment maintained in the war on the Arabs would suffice to build and endow a school, or to have constructed between one and two miles of permanent railway. The total amount of capital so applied exceeds nearly by one-fourth the amount expended on the existing railroads in Great Britain. It may be confidently averred that the cost of the forts detaches, or enceintes-continues, said to be on a reduced scale upwards of ten millions sterling, would, if properly directed, with the accessaries of moral appliances in addition to such physical means as those indicated by the officers of public health, suffice within the period of the living generation, to renovate the physical and moral condition of the great mass of the population in the interior of that capital.
[27]. Vide Appendix—Explanations of the District Mortuary Returns.
[28]. Vide other instances cited in the Annales d’Hygiene.—Number 59, p. 153 to 159.
[29]. Vide Regulations at Franckfort and Munich, Appendix.