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74 SUGGESTIONS FOR SANITARY ORGANIZATION.
that no Health-Committee can exist for a month
without it; nor can any officer, having proper
respect for his character, consent to be considered
responsible for the health of a population, whose illnesses
he learns only from their posthumous record
in the death-register.
During the recent prevalence of cholera, the
Health-Committee of the Common Council complied
for the time with my recommendation, and
established a system of daily reports, rendered still
more serviceable by free personal intercourse
between myself and the several gentlemen having
medical charge of the three City unions. What
needed to be daily during a period of pestilence,
might fitly become a weekly communication at all
other times. I have already reported to the
Health-Committee, and I beg to reiterate here,
that the advantages derived from that system of
communication were such as could have been
attained in no other way.
I may remind you that each of the gentlemen
referred to, serving under the Poor Law,
works within a certain small and definite district;
that he is therefore peculiarly competent to speak
on the state of the population in that district, on
their habits and necessities, on their customary
condition of health, and on their liability to epidemic
disease; and that the total staff of these
officers, taken collectively, representing the medical
practice of the whole city, can supply exactly that