of the British soldier would be not 69 per 1,000, but 10 per 1,000, say the Commissioners. But it is not for the soldier alone we speak. The report has a much deeper meaning and intent than this:-it aims at nothing less than to bring the appliances of a higher civilisation to the natives of India. Such revelations are made, especially in the reports from the stations, with regard to the sanitary condition of these, as to be almost incredible. Everywhere the people are suffering from epidemic diseases; fevers, dysenteries, cholera-constant epidemics we may call them, and constant high death-rates (how high can never be known, because there is no registration). The plague and pestilence is the ordinary state of things. The extraordinary is when these sweep over large tracts, gathering strength in their course, to pass over gigantic mountain ranges and to spread their ravages over Western Asia and Europe. And all this might be saved! We know the causes of epidemic outbreaks here. Take the worst condition of the worst and most neglected town district at home; and this is, to say the least of it, much better than the normal condition of nearly the whole surface of every city and town in India. Not one city or town is drained. Domestic filth round the people's houses is beyond description. Water-supply is from wells, or tanks, in ground saturated with filth. No domestic conveniences. Every spare plot of ground is therefore in a condition defying us to mention it farther. Rains of the rainy season wash the filth of the past dry season into the wells and tanks. The air in, and for some distance round, native towns is as foul as sewer air. [At Madras a wall has actually been built to keep this from the British town.] No sanitary administration. No sanitary police. Here then we have, upon a gigantic scale, the very conditions which invariably precede epidemics at home. India is the focus of epidemics. Had India not been such, cholera might never have been. Even now, the Sunderbunds, where every sanitary evil is to be found in its perfection, are nursing a form of plague increasing yearly in intensity, covering a larger and larger area, and drawing slowly round the capital of India itself. Are we to learn our lesson in time? Some say :-What have we to do with the natives or their habits? Others find an excuse for doing nothing in the questions arising out of caste. But caste has not interfered with railways. The people of themselves have no power to prevent or remove these evils-which now stand as an impassable barrier against all progress. Government is everything in India. The time has gone past when India was considered a mere appanage of British commerce. In holding India, we must be able to show the moral right of our tenure. Much is being done, no doubt, to improve the country-by railways, canals, and means of communication; to improve the people-by education, including under this word, European literature and science. But what at home can be done in education, if we neglect physical laws? How does education progress here, without means of cleanliness, of decency, or health? The school lessons of a month are sapped in an hour. If the people are left a prey to epidemics and to immoral agencies in their homes, it is not much good sending them to school. Where should we be now with all our schools, if London were like Calcutta, Madras, or Bombay?—the three seats of Government in India. The next great work then is sanitary reform in India. Water-supply. Draining. Cleansing. Healthy plans for arranging and constructing buildings. Together with agricultural drainage and improved cultivation all round. These things the people cannot do for themselves. But the India Government can do them. And, in order to do them, three Health Departments (one for each of the Presidencies) have been recommended by the Royal Commission, together with a Home Commission to help these Departments in bringing the appliances of a better civilisation to India. The work is urgent. Every day it is left undone adds its quota of inefficiency to the British Army, and its thousands of deaths to the native population. Danger is common to European and to native. Many of the best men this country ever had have fallen victims to the same causes of disease which have decimated the population of Hindostan. And so it will be till the India Government has fulfilled its vast responsibility towards those great multitudes who are no longer strangers and foreigners, but as much the subjects of our beloved Queen as any one of us. The real, the main point in the Report of the Royal Commission is this: Look to the state of your stations first-then look to the hills for help. Your stations and cities are in a condition which, in the finest temperate climate in Europe, would be-have been, the cause of the Great Plague-of half the population being swept off by disease. And on the other hand, no climate in the world, certainly not that of India, could kill us, if we did not kill ourselves by our neglects. We complain of the climate, when the wonder is that there is one of us left, under a sky which certainly intensifies causes of disease-so much so indeed that, one would have thought, it might set men to work to remove these causes, and twice as vigorously as in a temperate climate, instead of not at all. But no our cities are not those of civilised men. It cannot now be said, as Burke did:- "England has built no bridges, made no high roads, cut no navigations." But in all that regards the social improvement of cities, still it must be said, as he did-how many years ago?" Were we driven out of India this day, nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed, during the inglorious period of our dominion, by anything better than the ourang-outang, or the tiger." For how much is it better now? Bring your cities and stations within the pale of civilisation. As they are, they are the life destroyers, not the climate. The hills, those very climates to which you look for succour, are becoming so pestiferous from your neglects, that they bear out this indictment. They cry to you as we do: reform your stations— thence comes the deadly influence. The question is no less an one than this:-How to create a public health department for India-how to bring a higher civilisation into India. What a work, what a noble task for a Government-no "inglorious period of our dominion" that, but a most glorious one! That would be creating India anew. For God places His own power, His own life-giving laws in the hands of man. He permits man to create mankind by those laws-even as He permits man to destroy mankind by neglect of those laws. POSTSCRIPT. Since this Paper was read, the lower death-rate of troops new to the country has actually been put forward as a proof that India is becoming healthy, and the 69 per 1,000 is an old antiquated average! But more than this, the diminution of mortality arising from the short duration of service, is ascribed to improvements carried out at Indian stations since the Royal Commissioners began their inquiry. The leading authorities on the subject ascribe the main causes of disease to want of drainage-bad sites-bad water badly distributedwretched sanitary condition of native bazaars and towns-bad barrack and bad hospital construction-surface over-crowding from want of barrack accommodation-want of occupation for the menintemperance in eating and drinking-want of proper barrack and hospital conveniences; it is difficult to see how India could have been freed from these causes of disease in three short years, which is about the average time since the Stational Reports were signed. That something may have been done in the way of cleansing, ventilation, ablution arrangements, means of recreation, is possible. But as to ventilation, it may almost be said that it is better to keep the foul air out than to let it in, at least at certain stations of which we have reports up to nearly the latest date from India. As to cleansing we have the report of a Government Commission on the last cholera, dated July 21, 1862, which tells us that, at a large station where cholera was fatal, the filth from the latrines was thrown down at places 100 yards from the barracks-that dead animals and every kind of refuse are accumulated in the same places without burial-that, before the cholera appeared, there were abominable cess-pools poisoning the whole atmosphere-that neglect of the commonest principles of sanitary science favoured the epidemic, -that the filth from the native latrines was used for feeding sheep! -that, for all this, the local military authorities had not neglected conservancy in any unusual degree," the reporters state—and that, bad as they considered it, the station was kept in much better order than many that they had visited. 66 We have also two printed documents of the Public Works Department, dated Calcutta, June 26, and September 9, 1863, proving that the capital of India was in a much worse state than appeared from the Stational Report sent to the Royal Commission in June, 1860. On the Contamination of Water by the Imperfect Drainage of Towns and Villages. By STEVENSON MACADAM, M.D., F.R.S.E., F.C.S., of Leith. THE importance of the Police and Improvement (Scotland) Act, 1862, which was promoted by Provost Lindsay, can hardly be over-estimated, and the advantages to be gained by the adoption of the Act in any locality where human beings are congregated will not be questioned by men at all conversant with sanitary matters; but the necessity and advantages of this measure are hardly understood, and are even questioned by the inhabitants of many towns and villages, who are ignorant of the blessings derived from sanitary measures. Almost the first question which is asked is as to the expense which may be incurred. The better health is hardly entertained till the sum of the cost has been reckoned. There is a great repugnance to be placed under assessment, and a feeling ignorantly exists in some places, that the commissioners appointed from each town or village will form themselves into an exacting board, and ruin themselves and their neighbours. The inhabitants of our towns and villages are apt to contrast the death-rate of their own place with that of large cities, forgetting that nature, whilst it favours them in many things, still requires that every effort should be made to derive the full benefit. The scant population, and possibly the high locality, may tend to confer upon the inhabitants reasonably good health, but the latter may not be the full measure which the locality and climate should ensure. For some years back I have been engaged in the investigation of matters relating to the sanitary conditions of towns and villages, and my attention was specially directed to the influence of want of drainage on water employed for drinking and culinary purposes. The majority of towns and villages carry on a system which is positively unwholesome and detrimental. In the better class of dwellings, each house, when built, is provided immediately underneath, or in a small attached garden or court, with two holes; one of which is the well with a pipe leading to the house or only to the pump, and the second is the cesspool, with a pipe coming from the house; the water is drawn from the one hole and returned to the other. The well is, in most instances, dependent for its supply on the percolation of water from the sides and bottom, and thus it sucks water from the neighbouring ground; whilst the cesspool of the house is not many yards away, and the liquid from the cesspool oozes through the soil and enters the well. The principle on which the well is dug is that it shall receive the water from the ground or channel, and the principle involved in the construction of the cesspool is, that. water escapes into the ground whilst the solids are left behind; so that the cesspools supply, in part at least, the wants of the well. This connexion is well seen in the rise of the neighbouring stream or river, which, oozing through the channel or ground, raises the height of the water in the well and the cesspool. That cesspools are related to wells in this manner is abundantly evident from the chemical examination of the ground and the analysis of the water. The ground around the cesspool is more or less impregnated with the products of putrefying organic matter, and whilst impurities are left in part in the ground, some enter the well. Occasionally the sides of the well are stained with an offensive slime, and in many instances, when cleaned out, the wells are found to contain a large quantity of disgusting matter. The sewage discharged from a house when comparatively fresh is comparatively harmless, and there is little danger; but when putrefaction sets in, and especially if the matter is arrested by cesspools in the neighbourhood of dwellings, there is much danger. In putrefying, some of the offensive matter becomes liquid, dissolves in the water, and permeates the soil, and often communicates a greenish yellow colour and offensive taste and odour. The change proceeds further, however, and the water, whilst charged with the debris of animal matter in solution, may be clear, bright, and sparkling, and have a pleasant cooling taste, which is apt to deceive people. The material has then passed in great part into the ultimate stage of putrefaction and decay, yielding nitrates which are dissolved in the water. I have examined many samples of water of pleasing appearances, and which were famed as good drinking water, but which on analysis showed the presence of from two to thirty grains of organic matter to the gallon, and one to ten grains of nitrates. The latter, or nitrates, form the ultimate stage of decay, and are indicative of the previous states having been passed through, and are undoubtedly the most deleterious. Where a water contains organic matter and nitrates there can be no doubt that all the stages of decomposition have been going on. The evil influence of such water has been observed in many places. Waller Lewis states that the London postmen who suffered much from diarrhea, after drinking water derived from a pump at Goldsmith's Hall, the water of which contained much of the products of decaying organic matter, were improved in health by substituting drinking |