The Globe. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 843, 7 March 1877, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 1877.

We are glad to sec that tho Board of Health has begun to do its work in earnest. “ While Some was burning, Aero was playing the fiddle,” and here, while public attention is almost entirely absorbed by tho never ending intricacies of a monster scheme of drainage, into the expensive and mysterious details of which people are daily plunging deeper and deeper, without any tangible likelihood of finding a bottom, diseases arc generated, and are stealthily spreading, owing to the commonest sanitary precautions being totally ignored. At the last meeting of the Board, the all-important question of how best to dispose immediately of the night soil in tho suburbs, was discussed, together with other matters appertaining to the general health and cleanliness of the disinet. It was resolved to take into immediate consideration the ad visibility of compelling the adoption of the pan system outside the belts —as suggested in the able report of the newlyappointed medical officer of tho Board —and steps were also taken to do away with the nuisance arising through people keeping pigs in the thickly populated parts of tho suburbs. Of course, as the colony becomes more densely populated, and the chief towns become centres of population, there is a certainty of diseases being propogated unless certain means—let them be ever so elementary in their nature —are adopted towards preventing the germs of these diseases from taking root. Want of cleanliness and of ventilation, together with excessive dampness, encourage tho development of infectious and of noxious miasmatic influences. People living in towns, as a rule, are too much occupied in the business of striving to make money to pay attention to sanitary precautions, until the conviction is forced upon them that it is necessary, fur the absolute preservation of health, that something should be done. And they do not stir, generally, until it is almost too late, forgetting the old adage, that—in matters of that kind especially prevention is infinitely better than cure. You cannot, perhaps, make people good “ by Act of Parliament,” but legislative pressure certainly is but too often required to bring healthiness and sanitary comforts to their doors. Hence it is, that we view with approval tho evident determination of the Board of Health to compel the ratepayers to do that which—looked at with the eyes of common-sense alone —ia indisputably best for them. It is notorious, that when the time arrives that disease has shown itself in such an unmistakeable form, fright, rather than inclination, induces householders to make attempts to purify and sweeten in a few hours the habitations rendered foul by the noxious gases of years’ accumulation. Those spasmodic attempts are generally abortive and ineffectual, and, in a short time, —the arm of the law not being there to direct compliance with a proper system of cleanliness—the evil breaks out afresh and with increased vigour. The sooner the Board adopts stringent measures in the direction of making people clean “ by Act of Parliament ” the better it will be. And, in the City proper, it must be said, that the bus-laws affecting sanitary requirements have of late b< e . very much set aside. The B.aird, however, has now a fully equipped Inspector, and great things, we believe, are expected at his hands. Under the Public Health Act, every local Board of Health is endowed with extensive powers. The Act contains numerous clauses specifying measures to be taken by those Boards for preventing, as well as for checking—in any way which they may think proper —the growth of infectious diseases. The resolution passed at yesterday’s meeting of our local Board, relating to the pignuisance, is one which comes under that head, and it is as well that some definite regulation should have been made on the subject. But a far more formidable agent in generating a certain class of diseases, and one also which tends greatly to assist in keeping up a high rate of sickness, 73 that created by too large a growth of foliage, which, in the i*as 6 ; pf Christchurch and its immediate vicinity, is now attaining very large proportions. Jb'ree access of the sun’s beneficial rays, and of wind, is absolutely necessary to health, ja lowering lands especially, where means of, natural drainage are but scant. They

contain the most essentially vivifying elements. We do not mean, of course, to say that the Board could be expected to deal with this question ol regulating the removal of trees, but we feel strongly that the time has comwhen every precaution necessary to ensure public health should be taken, and when householders should endeavour to use every means in their power to assist the Board in its endeavours to look after the ratepayers interests. And this matter of overgrown vegetation is one well worthy of serious consideration.