“The sanitary labours of your officers increase year by year as the population becomes denser, and the need for sanitary precautions grows more urgent.”
And underneath all was the view expressed by the Medical Officer of Health for Islington (1881):—
“I fear the public have not even yet learned to regard health as a matter of infinitely greater moment than rates and taxes.”
How far-reaching were the effects of disease was admirably set forth by Dr. Simon:—
“I do not pretend to give any exact statement of the total influence which preventable diseases exert against the efficiency and happiness of our population, for it is only so far as such diseases kill, and even thus far but very imperfectly, that the effect can be reported in numbers. Of the incalculable amount of physical suffering and disablement which they occasion, and of the sorrows, and anxieties, the permanent darkening of life, the straitened means of such subsistence, the very frequent destitution and pauperism which attend or follow such suffering, death statistics testify only in sample or by suggestion.”[148]
Few people realise the infinite importance of health to a great community.
As one of the Medical Officers of Health truly wrote:—
“It is a question whether the greatness of countries will not in future to a very large extent depend upon the standard of public health.”
One of the very best and most experienced of the men who held the responsible office of Medical Officer of Health during the last half century—Dr. Bateson, the Medical Officer of Health for St. George in Southwark—in his reports often dwelt upon this aspect of the subject:—