Public health : the right use of records founded on local facts : being two papers read before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, at Bradford, in October, 1859, with an account of subsequent proceedings, further remarks and evidence on the main subject, and replies to certain objections / by Henry Wyldbore Rumsey.

  • Rumsey, Henry Wyldbore, 1809-1876.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public health : the right use of records founded on local facts : being two papers read before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, at Bradford, in October, 1859, with an account of subsequent proceedings, further remarks and evidence on the main subject, and replies to certain objections / by Henry Wyldbore Rumsey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    thropists and social reformers may be the ' final cause,' as a logician -would say, for the perpetration of blunders and the conservation of abuses. But unhappily for this splendid theory, there is also a host of dis- contented tax-jiayers who will not accept the explanation, practi- cal men who persist in demanding, that if central offices—a Census and Registration department—a Council of Health—a Poor Law Board —are to be maintained, and their Blue Books printed at the public charge, the information these afibrd shall apply correctly to every town and district, and be easy of reference to its inhabitants. Any attempt to defeat a fair project for the improvement of local administration by raising against it the stale cry of centralization— despotism—bureaucracy—would be intelligible euough and in some degree excusable, if made either by the local bodies themselves, or by ephemeral journalists who have some clique to serve, or a profit to turn by fostering vulgar conceits. But we can hardly suppose that an objection of the kind would come from the heads of a central depart- ment, with the view of averting public attention from its defects. Such an attack, however, from any quarter, is the less to be appre- hended in the case of my proposals, as their object is, unmistakably, the localization of intelligence as opposed to its mere centralization. Instruction in the main facts of life and health, of death and disease, which are alike the foundation and the plea for sanitary laws, ought of course to precede any grant of power to administer those laws. And a machinery for collecting and diifusing the necessary knowledge ought to be the preliminary condition of any further legislation for the public health. The first demand of every rational sanitary re- former would therefore be— ' That a permanent organization for local scientific Inquiry and Report be established in every Registration district or small group of districts.' This indispensable requirement was omitted in a very important petition from the Council of the Social Science Association, pi-esented to Parliament in 1859. The petitioners were, doubtless, justified in praying 'that local authorities be invested with sufficient powers for dealing with causes of disease,' and 'that the Crown exercise a reasonable amount of supervision as to the efficiency and success with which these powers are employed.' But they failed to ask for the fulfilment of the primary condition which could alone make the exer- cise of those powers an advantage to the people. It seems to me that petitions of this kind proceed on the mistaken assumption, that all causes of preventable disease can be removed by parochial vestries and boards elected by ratepayers,—ignoring the only reliable basis upon which sanitary regulations can rest. So long as a large share of disease-causation is due to circumstances and conditions, which though probably removable, may yet be wholly beyond the reach and' irrespective of the functions of Town Councils and Local Boards, it is as unreasonable as it is untrue to call for only one class of preventive measures.