The GLIO Site

THE PUBLIC HEALTH. 

     The Quarterly return of Births, Marriages and Deaths was published this morning. 

     Without presuming on the gift of prophecy, still we are gratified at finding one of our prognostications verified. The Register General now states, ‟persons with families who are about visiting new sites, will consult the Registrar’s reports, and thus avoid exposure to local epidemics.” How pregnant with good or evil is this short sentence, and how palpably will the effects of dirt tell on such places, from their own folly refuse the Public Health Act, to their own undoing. The ladies will be gratified at learning that throughout Hants and Sussex marriages have increased. One hundred and fifty nine thousands of blessed babbies have popped into ‟this world of England,” in the last three months. Great good has been done in many towns by the sanatory arrangements enforced against lodging houses, obliging them to be well ventilated, cleaned, and whitewashed, and only permitting a certain number to sleep in each room. 

     Of our own immediate neighbourhood, the following is the last three months’ results. 

     Eleven per cent of the whole of these deaths are referred to small pox; in some of the more densely peopled and in a sanatory point of view, most neglected parts of this district, owing to the want of water, dirty gutters, and lack of drainage, this disease has raged with intense violence, destroying In a few days several persons in a family, the epidemic has now abated. In Stockbridgc typhus fever has been prevalent.