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THE LADIES' SANITARY ASSOCIATION 75
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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« ^ • »>- • Of The Some Most Man Interes...
and more drawn towards the inevitable consequent deductions . Vaccination had proved that the ravages of at least one fatal disease
had been arrested , and the practice of excessive bleeding as a remedfor every trifling ailment had mostly passed away .
Then y came that strange and fearful foreign visitant , the Cholera . Germinated early in this century in the marshy delta of Indian
Ganges , it gradually diffused itself over the length and breadth of the peninsula , creeping on for some months with wonderful
uniformity at the rate of cne degree a month . On its eastward course it reached China in 1820 on its westward it attacked
, Arabia , Persia , and Syria , and in 1822 the dread fiend stood on the frontier of Europe , looking out , like Alexander , for fresh worlds
to conquer . In 1823 it overleaped the boundary , and , strange to relatelingered for nearly ten years in Russia , but in 1831 it
summoned , WarsawBerlin , Hamburg , and Sunderland , and in 1832 London and , Paris bent to the blow . England lost nearly
15 , 000 people ; and the town of Bilston near Birmingham yet recalls the terrible tradition of twenty-seven years ago . We may
remark in passing , that the visitation of 1849 was even much more severe , London alone furnishing 14 , 49 7 deaths . In this case also
the disease had risen and become epidemic in India , ( in 1843 , ) and spread slowlwestward during six years .
It may be y easily imagined what an impetus must have been given by the cholera to sanitary efforts ; with what fear and trembling
men must have looked round for some potent exorcism . Whether contagious or not , it was abundantly provable that hot damp
weather was propitious to the disease , and that those who lived in bad airamidst defective drainageor who were given to
intemthe perance disease , or . other After ordinary 1832 we unhealth , be y habits sure that , fell the soonest nation victim thoug s ht to may
more of washing and setting its house in order than ever it had done before .
The next great movement was connected with the Poor Laws . In the same 1832 Lord Grey ' s government issued a
Commission of inquiry year , into the , condition of the laboring class in every parish throughout England and Wales , and . Mr . Edwin Chadwick
was appointed Assistant Commissioner . In the course of these investigations his mind seems to have been much impressed with the
importance of ill health as a cause of poverty , for in 1838 we find him obtaining the consent of the Poor Law Commissioners to a
special inquiry into the physical causes of fever in the metropolis , which miht be removed- bproper sanitary measures . This inquiry
was also g extended to the whole y kingdom . From this time a broad stream of interest upon sanitary matters set steadily in . In 1840
an investigation was undertaken by a Committee of the House of Commonsthe result of which was a report " On the Health of
, large Towns and populous Districts . " In 1842 the Poor Law
Commissioners vol . in . presented another to both Houses , "On the g 2 Sanitary
The Ladies' Sanitary Association 75
THE LADIES' SANITARY _ASSOCIATION 75
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1859, page 75, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041859/page/3/
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