In reviewing the result of this inspection, I shall call your attention only to the more patent causes of disease found existing, and to the preventable diseases discovered, and their relation to these causes. In this evidence you will find ample proof that radical reforms are required in the health organizations of New York.
I will first notice the causes of disease which exist external to our dwellings, and which are the most readily susceptible of remedy. The first that attracts attention in New York is the condition of the streets. No one can Filthy
Streets doubt that if the streets in a thickly populated part of a town are made the common receptacle of the refuse of families, that in its rapid decomposition a vast amount of poisonous gases must escape, which will impregnate the entire district, penetrate the dwellings, and render the atmosphere in the neighborhood in a high degree injurious to the public health. In confirmation of this statement, I will quote the City Inspector, who, in a former communication to the Common Council, says:
“As an evidence of the effect of this state of things upon the health of the community, I would state that the mortality of the city, from the first of March, has been largely on the increase, until it has now reached a point of fearful magnitude. For the week ending April 27th, there were reported to this department one hundred and forty more deaths than occurred during the same week of the previous year. Were this increase of mortality the result of an existing pestilence or epidemic among us, the public would become justly alarmed as to the future; but although no actual pestilence, as such, exists, it is by no means certain that we are not preparing the way for some fatal scourge by the no longer to be endured filthy condition of our city.”
The universal testimony of the sanitary inspectors is that in all portions of the city occupied by the poorer classes, the streets are in the same filthy condition as that described by the City Inspector, and, that street filth is one of the most fruitful causes of disease.
Says the Inspector of the Eighth Ward: “Laurens, Wooster, Clark, and Sullivan are in a most filthy condition, giving off insalubrious emanations on which depend the many cases of fever, cholera infantum, dysentery, and pulmonary diseases. I have Street Filth
and Disease observed that near where other streets cross the above-named streets there is a greater proportionate amount of sickness; and this fact I have shown by special reports of typhus and typhoid fever in Grand and Broome, and dysentery in Spring.”
The Inspector of the Sixth Ward says: “Domestic garbage and filth of every kind is thrown into the streets, covering their surface, filling the gutters, obstructing the sewer culverts, and sending forth perennial emanations which must generate pestiferous disease. In winter the filth and garbage, etc., accumulate in the streets, to the depth sometimes of two or three feet. The garbage boxes are a perpetual source of nuisance in the streets, filth and offal being thrown all around them, pools of filthy water in many instances remaining in the gutters, and having their source in the garbage boxes.”
The Inspector of the Seventh Ward says: “The whole most easterly portion of the district, the streets and gutters are very filthy with mud, ashes, garbage, etc.”
The Inspector of the Thirteenth Ward says: “The streets are generally in a filthy and unwholesome condition; especially in front of the tenant-houses, from which the garbage and slops are, to a great extent, thrown into the streets, where they putrefy, rendering the air offensive to the smell and deleterious to health. The refuse of the bedrooms of those sick with typhoid and scarlet fevers and smallpox is frequently thrown into the streets, there to contaminate the air, and, no doubt, aid in the spread of those pestilential diseases.”
Says the Inspector of the Ninth Ward: “The effect of dirty streets upon the public health is too well known, and too often insisted upon, to need any exposition in this report. The largest number of cases of cholera infantum, cholera morbus, and kindred disease, is always found in localities where the streets are dirtiest.”
The Inspector of the Seventeenth Ward writes: “The two following localities present the appearance of dung-hills rather than the thoroughfares in a civilized city, viz.: Sixth Street, between Bowery and Second Avenue, and Eleventh Street, between First and Second Avenues.”