It is a thing for society, for the rich, for the poor, for the thoughtful, for the energetic, for the clergy, for the municipalities, for the reformers, for the working men and the working women, for the people — for us all to take up and to work on till we get it. And it may be said: it is idle to appeal to the public about the death-rate of cities, about sewers, and museums, and cemeteries, and sanitary homes and parks for the people, and play-grounds for the children, and baths and wash-houses, and good schools. No! it is everything to have a true and sound notion of what we want or ought to have; to have a right ideal of a human, healthful, and happy city. We can all do something, even the humblest of us, to get a decent, habitable roof over our heads; to see that our children have water and milk to drink that is not poisoning them; we can all take decent precautions not to spread disease by neglect, folly, and ignorance.
And we can all together make a real impression on those who have the wealth and the direction of society upon them, if we make them feel that you are no longer satisfied with rotting old tenements for homes, contaminated water to drink, and dismal, joyless miles of streets to live in, where the pure air of heaven is turned into a pall of smoke. We can tell those who have the wealth and the power that the lives, and the health, and the comfort of the great masses are the very first of all their duties; that the contests of Radicals and Tories are of infinitely small importance compared with the lives of the people private guide turkey. If it be not true that Sanitas — Sanitas, omnia Saniias—if health and comfort be not the greatest of all things—they are the most urgent of all things, the foundation of all things.
It is quite true that the death-rate of London is remarkably low, but it ought to be lower. The very fact that London has so nobly distinguished itself amongst all the capitals of Europe is proof that it can do much to save life. It has a vast deal more to do.
Sir Spencer Wells
One of our greatest authorities, Sir Spencer Wells, speaking in the face of Europe as representing the sanitary reformers of this country, gave it as his deliberate judgment that the death- rate of our great cities might be, and ought to be, reduced to at least 12 per thousand per annum —that is, a reduction of nearly 10 per thousand, not far off half the deaths. There have been some weeks of recent years, when London approached within measurable distance of this great ideal. There are now some districts in the west inhabited by the rich where the death-rate is at times below even this limit. There is no sanitary authority which denies the possibility of reaching a death-rate of 12 per thousand. It would mean some 30,000 lives saved each year in London alone.
And at what price is the great result attainable? The cost of an African war, perhaps, ten years of engineering labour, absolutely wholesome water to drink, and plenty of it to wash in and to wash with, a rational and healthy drainage to carry off poison from our homes — sewer- gas and other abominations of civilisation in the stage of blunder would become as much things of the past as the leprosy.
Ottoman in Bulgaria 