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SUGGESTIONS FOR SANITARY ORGANIZATION. 73
necessary I deemed such returns, for the purpose of
guiding and justifying the various recommendations
which it would become my duty to lay before you.
The period which has since elapsed, including its
three months of pestilence, has furnished me with
the strongest confirmation of those views. As I
formerly stated by anticipation, so now I repeat
from experience, that nothing deserving the name
of sanitary administration can exist in the City,
without accurate periodical intelligence of all such
sickness (at least) as comes under parochial treatment,
or without such reports on the local sanitary
conditions and on other causes of disease, as were
desired to accompany that intelligence.
When the matter was previously under your
consideration, it was argued that the reception of
such intelligence formed no part of your functions
as a Commission for draining, lighting, paving, and
cleansing the City of London; that all sanitary
matters, beyond these and the like, were foreign to
your proper sphere of operation; and that your
funds, raised by rates from the citizens of London,
could not with propriety be applied to meet the
expenses of such an arrangement. On this question
of jurisdiction and finance I shall, of course,
hazard no opinion. I would simply beg to repeat,
with regard to so much of the matter as lies within
my own professional province, that the intelligence
in question is absolutely necessary for the present
progress of sanitary measures within the City;