ABSTRACT
The evil effects of overcrowding upon the poorer classes of our large towns is now generally recognised, but it is not so widely understood that it is to the interest of all in the community to do away with these evils. Self-interest enforces the dictates of humanity. For under such conditions of life the workman, even if looked upon merely as an instrument to produce wealth, is not nearly so valuable to the community as he might be. As Mr Sidgwick puts it, ‘Competition does not tend to give the labourer the real wages required to make his labour most efficient.' The vital statistics alone would prove this. The result of the improvements undertaken in Paris under Napoleon has been to reduce the mortality by one-half. But medical statistics show that for every person who dies in this way, six persons are ill, and the consequent loss to the community of wealth-producing power is enormous. The interests of one class cannot be separated from those of another. ‘The advance of pathological knowledge', writes Dr Bristowe, ‘proves that most, if not all, epidemic disorders spread by contagion.' According to the same authority the contagion of some disorders, influenza, for instance, is remarkable for its ‘amazing diffusibility', while that of others, such as scarlet fever, ‘remain dormant for months in articles of clothing'. Now it must be borne in mind that the milk, the food, the linen used in the better classes pass through the hands of those who live in courts and alleys, and whose conditions of lives, although concealed, have the most serious influence upon the lives and health of those whose circumstances appear to place them above all danger, and who may live at a great distance from the source of contagion. Dr Aubrey Husband, in his book upon Forensic Medicine, after showing that the poison of typhoid fever may be carried by water and by food, instances the recent outbreaks in the West-end of London, where the carriage of the poison was traced to the milk used by those attacked.
