Note 168 — OF THE PRESERVATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH.

In the year 1809 a decree was passed in Paris, containing numerous rules to be observed in the future construction of privies, and which fixed upon the householder a very heavy expense. In 1819 the French King issued a Royal Ordinance relative to this subject; it contains thirty-four clauses or articles, thirty of which revive in their full strictness, all the statutes by which housekeepers are compelled to undertake most expensive and troublesome building, or repairs of privies. To relieve them, however, from vexatious costs, the 31st article was framed upon the recommendation of the Privy Council, and which liberates those from the obligation, who shall substitute their old privies by a new apparatus invented by M. Cazeneuve, entitled Messrs. Fauche-Borel’s Patent Moveable Inodorous Conveniences, of whose advantages almost all the learned Societies of Europe have reported most favourably. We have noticed this decree in order to shew our reader what a degree of importance the French Government attaches to the subject. And upon this occasion it is impossible to withhold the expression of those feelings of national pride and exultation which the contemplation of this subject must afford us; we have in our metropolis no less than 200,000 privies, of which 10,000 only are water closets. In Paris the number does not exceed 70,000, and yet with all the cumbrous enactments which that government has passed for their regulation, how far inferior they are in cleanliness, and how far greater are the effects of their effluvia, when compared with similar establishments in our city. The truth is, that the most elaborate system of medical police will never be so effective as the spirit of cleanliness which is so characteristic of this great and free people; and in this truth, so forcibly illustrated by the subject under discussion, we are to seek for the real explanation of that fact which has been so frequently commented upon by medical writers—The apparent indifference of our government to the subject of Public Health.