THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9161, 7 August 1908, Page 6

THE WEEK, THE WORLD, AND WELLINGTON.

(By Frank Morton.)

The House of Dirt.—The Curse of Quacks.

Under the suggestive heading of * The House of Dirt," the Wellington evening papjr published on Friday, and the "New Zealand Times" reprinted with acknowledgments on Saturday morning, an article that it •would be well that every patriotic New Zealander should read I give you the description contained in the article of a Wellington boardingliouse; nine rooms, rent, £2 10s: •'The exterior was of most unpromising in appearance, and the timbers were decaying in places; but when j the front door opened a powerfully n >isome odjur rushed out. It was iavinsible, but could be felt —damp, warm, and heavy. The floor of the hall was of the colour of the road a b.ackish brown, and dirt caked. Dirty rags were lying about, and a grimy fluff hung on the wallpaper. making it, with the cobwebs, a kind of black-grey felt, except where the friction cf passing bodies had put a polish on the wall. In most of the rooms tne wall and ceiling papers were bellied and failing with festoons of cobwebs; and in places laths were tacked along the ceiling to keep the paper from falling. In the dining-room were two beds or couches, one of them occupied as a bed by a boarder v/no was sound asleep. The room was very dirty, and grime clung to the curtains like some foul lichen. In the sitting room there was much furniture, heaps of old clothes and rags, dnd three beds, orte of them double. An invalid lay in one of the beds. A fire burned in the room, and the atmosphere was sickeningly pungent. Daylight struggled through one window, and the room was in semi-darkness, a kind of twilight, for the dead wall of the adjoining house shut out most of the light, although it was midday. The windows were open, and the door was apparently kept shut. It was very difficult to move about the room by reason of the impedimenta. The measurements of this room were 14ft by 12ft. The kitchen was also very dirty. It contained a couch made up as a bed. In the hall were boxes and mattresses, which were obviously used as shakedowns. Upstairs, in a bedroom measuring 6ft by 12ft, were two beds. The air in this room was absolutely foetid. Here as elsewhere the bed clothes consisted of dirty tattered rags. In ah adjoining room lift by 16ft, were five beds, to say nothing of other furniture. Dirt lay thickly on the Venetian blinds, and the floor was in the same condition as that in the bottom part of the house. Spider webs, large and black, were spread over a fair portion of the ceiling area. In three other rooms, measuring 15ft by from 6ft to 7ft, were other beds — two to a room —and in one room of about the same size was a single bed. The rooms were very dirty." Faugh! —Enough. Wellington is the true city and stronghold of the "influential" lawbreaker. If I were permitted, I could give you curious information regarding the contumacy of some of our moneyed gangs. There has been such cornering of land, such juggling with realities, that the filthy boarding-house pest has been literally forced and nursed into existence. Every man has to spend quite a decent income in the payment of his rent, if he desires to live in any sort of decency. There is constant and increasing inducement to over-crowd. Yard-space is restricted to an abominable and most dangerous extent. If the conditions do not improve substantially very soon, it will be positively necessary either to remove the seat of Government or do something equally drastic. Land and property jobbers in the city sail very close to the law. Men without means buy and build houses. There is a flutter of vested interests whenever attempt is made to effect amelioration in the crowded quarters. There are houses standing that have been condemned for years, and the City Council knows that they are standing. The whole position is absurd. Mr Hornsby's Bill designed further to clip the claws of quacl<s is a very cood thing, even though it does not go half far enough. This is the age of specialists. It is equally the age of charlatans. Thousands of people are killed yearly by the quackery of general practitioners of medicine ; but millions are slain by the quacks absolute, the patent medicine fiends, the sellers of nostrums, the vampires that batten so profitably on human qualms and superstitions. The mistakes of general practitioners are the unavoidable of earnest and humane men who attempt to learn more than any one man in an imperfect world can possibly learn to do. The murders of the quacks are infamous and without excuse. They drain their resources of poor homes, and give in return for good money things that cannot by any possibility improve or restore health; and as they bleed the people, they kill them. It is possibly a reasonable thing to permit a man to make and sell a preparation that, used according to the directions, has a fair chance of doing good in the relief of simple ailments. But that' should have to be proved to the satisfaction of a board of experts in every case before sale is permitted. The board should fix the retail price of the article, and issue permits for it to be made only in certain quantities and in a ".ertain way. As patent medicines are vastly profitable things to make andjjsell, it might be well to decide that a quarter of the net profits should be returned to the Government, to yo to a fund for the maintenance of hospitals and the inauguration of a sounder and more searching sanitary system. This shuuld be, even more than it is the age of specialists. The general practitioners are not the hindrance. If people would form the sane habit of only going to the doctor who had made a special study of their ailment, th general practitioners would really be very glad. Because, you see, general practitioner ia a tpecialLt in his heart. Every man naturally prefers to do the thing that most appeals to him. Doctors as a class are the hardest worked and (all things considered) the poorest paid men in the community.