Reckoning that each Inspector, if he fulfilled no other duty, could report on the condition of about fifty houses _per diem_, I presume that henceforth, in each of your five more important districts, from one hundred to one hundred and twenty houses can be visited weekly by the Inspector, without encroaching on the time required for his other duties.
The general plan, on which I would propose that this force should be disposed, is the following:--first, as heretofore, the weekly list would contain all places needing investigation on the ground of such deaths and illness as are usually associated with preventable causes, in order that any sanitary defects may at once be remedied in them; secondly, in each week there would fall due a certain number of sanitary works (relating to house-drainage, water-supply, and the like) for which you would have previously issued orders requiring them to be completed within a stated time, and on the satisfactory execution of these it will be the Inspectors duty to examine and certify; thirdly, in each district I would have a certain rota of visitation, according to the badness of the spot and its known liability to fall into filthy and unwholesome condition, requiring one set of houses to be seen weekly, another set fortnightly, another monthly, another quarterly, and so on--a rota, varying from time to time with the changing circumstances of each locality; and, out of this rota, each week would supply a stated number of cases for inquiry, to which I should occasionally add certain of those establishments in which offensive occupations are pursued. Thus, in the large number of weekly visits which I suppose the Inspector to make, there would be a certain proportion of that more elaborate kind which involves an examination of the entire house; another proportion, made for the sole purpose of seeing that previous orders have been executed; another proportion, repeated at fixed intervals, simply to ascertain that houses, once cleansed and repaired, are not relapsing into filth, nor their works becoming inefficient.
By utilising, on some such plan as this, the increased staff which you have appointed for the purpose, and by giving to its execution my continual superintendence, I trust to be able, from time to time, to certify you that the City becomes better and better capable of resisting epidemic invasion.[85] From such statements as I have set before you, on the local affinities of disease--not of Cholera alone, but of typhus and its kindred, you will be prepared to expect increased sanitary advantage, from this more systematic suppression of the causes of death: and I believe you will not be disappointed. Whether the anticipated pestilence rage in our metropolis or not, you will be combating, day by day, the influence of other malignant diseases. Whenever it may be in my power to tell you generally of the City, that the dwellings of the poor are no longer crowded and stifling; nor their walls mouldy; nor their yards and cellars unpaved and sodden; nor their water-supply defective; nor their drainage stinking; nor their atmosphere hurt by neighbouring nuisances; then, gentlemen, whether Cholera test your success or not, surely you will have contributed much to conquer more habitual enemies. For whatever there may be specific and exceptional in the production of Cholera, at least it touches no healthy spot: the local conditions which welcome its occasional presence are, in its absence, hour by hour, the workers of other death; and in rendering a locality secure against the one, you will also have made it less vulnerable by the others.