“Sanitary science and experience have full clearly proved to us how great an extent the prevention of disease and its extension rests with us.”
But against contagion and infection no precautions whatever were taken, and so disease was sown broadcast throughout the community, and death followed.
As to suggested remedies and action there was a chorus of absolute unanimity upon some points:—
“The principal cause of the extent of zymotic disease,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Mile-End-Old-Town, in 1859, “is the defective state of the habitations of the poorer classes. The remedy for the evil is only to be secured by a systematic house visitation.
“… Without a general house inspection it is impossible to secure the proper entry to and use of the expensive sewers which have been and are being constructed.
“Having done so much for the streets, pavements, and drains, the improvements will lose half their salutary effect if the interior of the dwellings are not placed in a corresponding condition of wholesome cleanliness.”
“It is,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel, “to the interior of the houses that our attention must be directed, for it is here that the source of disease is usually found…. An habitual and detailed inspection of the houses occupied by the poorer classes is therefore essential.”
A house-to-house visitation was, indeed, the first essential. By no other means could the actual condition of the abodes of the people be ascertained, and the breeding places of disease be discovered, cleared out, and rendered innocuous. And as there was a never ceasing tendency on the part of the poorer classes to sink into a condition of uncleanliness, and on the part of their abodes to fall into dilapidation, or, as it was expressed, “a pertinacity for dirt,” so was constant inspection and supervision of vital necessity for the maintenance of any improvements made.
“There are,” wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras (1858), “many parts of the parish densely crowded. Some of the people have become so used to filth, they appear to prefer it to cleanliness; at any rate, they have not the energy to get rid of it and improve their condition. Such houses—perfect hotbeds of infectious diseases—ought to be visited two or three times a year….”
The Medical Officers of Health had one valuable object lesson before them in the common lodging-houses, which, regulated and inspected by the police under the Acts passed by Parliament, had shown that even the very worst conditions of life could be ameliorated, and that the very lowest and most miserable classes of society were not beyond improvement.