There is not in England, as in most countries of the continent, a separate code or system of laws for the preservation of the public health; actual nuisances, of which we shall treat under a separate head, are provided against by liability to indictment or action at the information or suit of the parties immediately interested; but except in the enforcement of the Quarantine laws for the prevention of foreign infection, the executive government takes little or no part in securing the bodily health of its subjects. The habits of order and cleanliness, for which the inhabitants of our island are celebrated, and the general salubrity of our climate, may have rendered such care less necessary; while our spirit of liberty and independence might have resisted the encroachments on domestic privacy, and the perpetual intrusion of local authorities, to which our neighbours are subjected. Except in extreme cases we are far from wishing any change; but as there are situations and circumstances, in populous towns, among the lowest order of the people, and in times of contagious or epidemic sickness, in which absolute apathy may be attended with danger, we may be allowed to hint that some prospective enactment would be more politic, than to be obliged to legislate for the evil when its mischiefs had been accomplished. This has been already done as respects Ireland by the statute 59th Geo. 3. c. 41. (see Appendix,) by which it is enacted that Officers of Health should be appointed annually, at vestries of the inhabitants in every city and large town, where the Lord Lieutenant or chief Governor shall think fit to direct.[143] Something of this kind might be advantageously extended to the whole of the United Kingdom.
In former times, however, when from the comparatively uncultivated state of the people, contagious diseases were more common, there were several laws and regulations on this head, which have now fallen into disuse. Many cities have still some relics of their Lazar-house, situated at some distance without the walls;[144] and there was also an ancient writ De Leproso amovendo, to remove a leper or lazar who thrust himself into the company of his neighbours in any parish, either in the church, or at other public meetings, to their annoyance. Reg. Orig. 237. By the 1st James, c. 31. (now expired) it was made felony if any one having a Plague sore running upon him goes abroad, 1 Hale, P. C. 432.[145] And to this day it is an indictable offence for any person to pass through the streets, or cause others to pass through the streets, even for medical advice, while they have the Smallpox upon them.[146] Previous to the important discovery of Vaccination, this law would have been attended with very considerable hardship; as it precluded the patient from the best remedy for the disorder—exposure to fresh air; yet there can be no doubt that in this as in all other cases, individual interest must yield to general policy. Had the rule been more carefully attended to, many of the pests to which human nature is subject, might have been checked or even extirpated in the commencement of their progress.
There is one disorder, to check the propagation of which has been singularly neglected, under the curious pretence that any regulation would be an encouragement to immorality; we cannot assent to the validity of this objection, and think that we should find little difficulty in refuting it. But the disease is undoubtedly on the decline both as to its frequency and its virulence.[147] The superior mode of medical treatment, by which many cases are arrested in the earliest stage, may have tended greatly to this effect; but we are inclined to attach yet greater importance to a change of habit in the upper and middle classes of society. The mode of life handed down to us by the poets, dramatists, novelists, and essayists from Charles to George the second, unhappily confirmed by the criminal records of the same period, has no existence in modern manners: drunkenness is no longer a fashionable vice; the tavern parties, which even Addison did not blush to describe, no longer disgrace us. From these social improvements, and from increased habits of cleanliness, we may deduce the milder form and more unfrequent occurrence of the disease, which poisons human life at its source. Still we feel some astonishment that the change has not been forwarded by a measure of the police; for though a Parisian system might savour somewhat too much of our own ancient abuses,[148] yet it would neither be difficult or immoral for the magistrates, when they occasionally clear the streets for the night, to order the detention of those whose liberty might, on surgical examination, prove dangerous to the unwary; obsta principiis is as good a maxim in law as in physic. One Surgeon attached to each police office, for this, and other evident purposes, would be materially useful and not considerably expensive.
We have observed in another place[149] on the attention necessary to be directed to prison discipline, as it respects the health of criminal or unfortunate prisoners; but the subject is so much before the public on this and other points, that we do not think it necessary to enlarge upon it here. It is not so, however, in other cases to which legislative attention might be advantageously directed. Sir Robert Peel’s Bill for regulating the working hours of children in the cotton factories, might in some of its enactments be safely extended to many other branches of trade, more especially when contagious diseases are found to exist in large collections of people confined to a very small space. This observation applies also to infectious diseases breaking out in schools; at present the discretion of the master is the only security to the public: in the higher class we have no doubt that this discretion is well exercised; but there are others where, gain being the only object, the speculator will rather risk the lives of the unfortunate children committed to his charge, than the chance of their being permanently removed from his precarious protection.[150]
We are well aware that any adequate remedy for these evils would require the most serious attention of the most experienced ability; but because the task is difficult, we do not think it impracticable; and where human life, in its most interesting and useful forms is at stake, we are assured that labour, however thankless in its outset, will ultimately meet its reward in the approval of society.
Having thus ventured to suggest some measures which seem calculated to secure and promote the public health, we may be allowed to glance at the impolicy of any tax which has a tendency to deprive the lower orders of those articles which are essential to it; the salt duties immediately suggest themselves as a lamentable instance of such impolicy: salt is to the poor an indispensable part of their diet; it is essential to their bodily health, to the preservation or composition of bread, butter, cheese, meat, fish, and almost every article of their food, and its utility is always greater in proportion to the scantiness, and nutritive deficiency of their diet.[151]
The importance of cleanliness in cities, and of purity in the waters by which they are supplied, will more properly fall under consideration in another division of our subject; but we may here generally observe, that no circumstance contributes in a greater degree to the public health than an attention to this branch of medical jurisprudence. The deleterious influence of stagnant waters is too apparent to admit controversy, in which are to be included moats, where the water has no motion, and meadows which are occasionally overflowed; it has accordingly been the policy of every enlightened country to provide adequate resources for its drainage, and those liberal individuals who have encouraged the plans for its accomplishment have ever been distinguished by the gratitude of the people. It has been conjectured, and not without probability, that the patriotism of Marcus Curtius is thus handed down to us in a figurative allusion, and that he probably filled up, at his own cost, some stagnant pools which affected the health of his fellow citizens. Empedocles, a disciple of Pythagoras, delivered the Salentines from the dangerous exhalations with which they were infested, by conducting two neighbouring rivers through their marshes, by which the stagnant waters were carried off; the air was therefore no longer infected, and the diseases which had flowed from this source immediately subsided. In ancient Rome, the physical evils which have since so materially contributed to deprive it of its former salubrity and splendour, were obviated by magnificent aqueducts.
The slaughtering of cattle is another very important object in relation to the public health of a great city, and we cannot but wish that some police regulations were established that might mitigate the serious evils so often experienced from this circumstance, in most of the large towns of the British empire.
There still remains to be noticed one practice connected with the public health, that requires some animadversion from the medical jurist—The Burial of the Dead in the midst of populous towns and cities.—It is certainly extraordinary that a country which has long abjured the errors of the church of Rome, should still retain one of its most absurd superstitions, yet such is the fact in England, as it respects the Burial of the Dead in churches, and church-yards, and in cemeteries, situated in the very heart of our most populous cities.[152] If the health of the people be a primary object of legislation, there is no point which in the present advanced state of population calls more imperiously for its interference; the cemeteries of the metropolis are so crowded[153] that it becomes more difficult to find room for the dead than the living, and yet free as we boast ourselves to be from the prejudices and superstitions of our ancestors, we question whether there is any point upon which more popular clamour would be raised than that of changing the system of burial. It is difficult, in the first place, to overcome those feelings which originate in a principle amiable and useful in itself, however mistaken it may be in its practical applications. Nature appears to have implanted in all mankind a sentiment of veneration for the mortal remains of those whom living we have loved or respected; every nation, whether civilized or barbarous, has accordingly invented and practised some ceremony,[154] generally of a religious character, in the final disposal of the human corpse; it is however the duty of the state to guard the living from those evils to which an ill applied respect for the dead may be likely to subject them.
Although we are disposed to admit with Diemerbroeck[155] and Dr. Bancroft,[156] that the effluvia which issue from putrefying human bodies are not capable of generating the specific contagious matter of Plague, Typhus, or any true pestilential fever, yet, but little reflection is necessary to lead any reasoning mind to the conclusion, that in the decomposition of the human body various noxious principles are developed highly injurious to human life. Dr. Bancroft, in order to establish his position respecting the non-pestilential nature of these effluvia, relates two instances of extensive exhumations, which he says furnish facts on so large a scale as completely, in his opinion, to decide the question. The first relates to those made in the church-yard of St. Eloi, at Dunkirk, in the year 1783; and the other to those made three years afterwards, in the famous cemetrie of the Saint Innocens, at Paris. As the operations and results were similar in both instances, it will be sufficient if we describe only the latter. The church-yard of the Saint Innocens, situated in one of the most populous quarters of the city of Paris, had been made the depository of so many bodies, that, although its area enclosed near two acres of ground, yet the soil had been raised by them eight or ten feet higher than the level of the adjoining streets: and upon the most moderate calculation, considerably more than six hundred thousand bodies had been buried in it, during the last six centuries: previous to which date, it was already a very ancient burial ground;[157] numerous complaints having been made concerning the offensive smells which arose from this spot, and had penetrated into the houses, and the deleterious effects which such emanations produced, having been described in a memoir read before the Royal Academy of Sciences[158] in 1783, by M. Cadet de Vaux, who held the useful office of Inspecteur GÉnÉral des objects de SalubritÉ, the Council of State decreed in 1785 that so much of the superstratum should be removed as would reduce the surface to the level of the streets. This work was accordingly undertaken in 1786, under the superintendance of M. Thouret, a Physician of eminence in Paris,[159] and in two years he accomplished it. It does not appear that any epidemic evils were experienced from these extensive exhumations, but it must be remembered that the great mass of bodies had been converted into a harmless and inoffensive substance resembling spermaceti, to which the name of Adipocire[160] has been given; had this change not occurred, it is more than probable that worse consequences would have been experienced from this horrible accumulation: sufficient instances however occurred to prove the dangerous tendency of the mephitic vapours[161] which were emitted; grave-diggers were thrown down suddenly, and deprived of sense and motion, upon breaking open, by their spades, the abdominal viscera; these vapours also, in a more diffused state, produced nausea, loss of appetite, and in the course of time, paleness of countenance, debility, tremors, &c. If farther evidence be required upon this subject, we have only to direct the reader’s attention to the effects occasioned by opening the graves in St. Dennis, and to which no allusion is made by Dr. Bancroft: the National Convention in the year 1793, in the true spirit of revolutionary ferocity, passed a decree upon the motion of BarrÈre, that the monuments of the Kings in this, as well as in all other places throughout France, should be destroyed. In carrying this decree into effect, the bodies of many of the latter Bourbons were found in a state of decomposition, and when the coffins were opened they are said to have emitted a thick black vapour, which, although vinegar and gunpowder were burnt to prevent ill consequences, affected the wretches employed in this inhuman work with fevers and diarrhÆas: so again when the ground of the church of St. Benoit was dug up a few years ago, a nauseous vapour was emitted, and several of the neighbours were affected by it.[162]
We are nevertheless far from believing that such cadaverous impurities, however unwholesome, are capable of generating the specific contagions of Typhus, &c.; nor are we even inclined to assent to that general opinion which supposes that putrid emanations from the bodies of persons who have died of a pestilential disorder are capable of re-exciting the disease, and we are fortified in this conclusion by the powerful testimony of Mr. Howard.[163] We ought not, however, to omit to state, that instances are on record, where the small-pox has suddenly appeared in a village, after opening the grave of a person who had a few months before fell a sacrifice to that disorder.
From the experiments and observations which have been made with respect to the decomposition of animal bodies that are interred in burying-grounds, it appears that they are, in such situations, subjected to very different laws of decomposition, from those which take place in bodies exposed to the open air. In the former case no danger can attend the operation provided the body be buried at a sufficient depth, and that the grave be not opened before its entire and complete decomposition. The depth of the grave ought to be such that the external air cannot penetrate it; that the juices with which the earth is impregnated may be conveyed to its surface, and that the exhalations, vapours, or gases, which are developed or formed by decomposition, should not be capable of forcing the earthy covering which detains them. The nature of the earth in which the grave is dug, influences all its effects. If the stratum which covers the body be argillaceous, the depth of the grave may be less, as this earth affords with difficulty a passage to any gas or vapour; but, as a general rule it may be admitted, that bodies should be buried at the depth of five feet, to prevent any unpleasant consequences. It is also important to remember that the decomposition of the soft parts, according to Mr. Petit, is not terminated until the expiration of three years, in graves of four feet deep; or four years when their depth is six feet. This term, of course, is stated as a medium; it must necessarily vary according to the nature of the soil, and the constitution of the subjects buried in it.
A knowledge of these facts ought to lead to a more rational system of interment. We can scarcely expect to see the fulfilment of the wish expressed by Evelyn in his Sylva, the establishment of a Necropolis without the walls; but much may be effected by judicious regulations; and the law will uphold any parochial officer in the conscientious discharge of the requisite duties; in certain cases it invests him with a considerable latitude of discretion; thus when a body is brought to be buried “it seemeth to be discretionary in the minister whether the corpse shall be carried into the church or not, and there may be good reason for this, especially in cases of infection.”[164] A curious controversy has lately taken place upon the introduction of iron coffins, and chemists have differed widely upon the subject of their relative durability, when compared with those of wood. Sir William Scott (now Lord Stowell) decided, and we think very justly, that under ordinary circumstances the former appear less perishable, and therefore when admitted into burying-grounds, that the parties are to be held liable to extraordinary fees.
Burial must not be delayed or denied, (Lindwood 278) nor hindered for debt,[165] (Burn Ec. L. 238) nor disturbed for purposes of dissection (King v. Lynn, vide Post.) Formerly by 30 C. 2, st. 1, c. 3, all bodies were directed to be buried in woollen, under the penalty of £10; this enactment, which was made with the idea of encouraging the woollen trade, is now repealed.
In relation to their effects upon the public health, the arrangement and cleansing of privies deserve some notice in this place. It has been long admitted that the effluvia which issue from these receptacles of human ordure are highly deleterious, and have been known to occasion a species of ophthalmia, diarrhÆa, and dysentery, while in a more concentrated form these emanations have proved suddenly fatal,[166] by producing an affection named by the French Nosologists[167] the Plomb, or the Asphyxia of privies. M. Dupuytren has given us many particulars respecting this affection; sometimes the patients are strongly asphyxied, and death takes place in a very short period; at others, the symptoms are less intense, and if the patients be carried into the open air, after a short interval, they make deep inspirations, and the breathing is gradually restored, although it continues laborious; the motion of the heart becomes perceptible, nevertheless the pulse is weak and small; the digestive and loco-motive apparatus have lost their contractile force; the functions of the brain are suspended; and if the patient finally recovers, he is a long time in re-establishing his strength. An emetic appears to be the remedy upon which the nightmen rely for relief.
The above observations are sufficient to shew the propriety of placing these establishments under police regulations, especially where the deleterious influence of their emanations are more decidedly remarkable, as in hospitals, prisons, and barracks. The governments of different countries have sought to prevent the evil, by various laws, edicts, and ordinances.[168]
In this country, we apprehend their supervision belongs to the very ancient and extensive jurisdiction of the Commissioners of Sewers,[169] who although not engaged like the Œdiles of ancient Rome, in superintending magnificent aqueducts, are occupied in directing the far more stupendous and wonderful works which extend beneath the foundations of our mighty city, and dispense to its inhabitants the essential requisites for comfort, cleanliness, and health.
