He created a public
opinion in favour of sanitary reform. He has also impressed the minds of
benevolent individuals with the necessity for providing improved
dwellings for the people; and has thus been the indirect means of
establishing the Peabody Dwellings, the Baroness Coutts' Dwellings, and
the various Societies for erecting improved dwellings for the industrial
classes.
Edwin Chadwick has thus proved himself to be one of the most useful and
practical of public benefactors. He deserves to be ranked with Clarkson
or Howard. His labours have been equally salutary; some will say that
they have been much more so in their results.
Sanitary science may be summed up in the one word--Cleanliness. Pure
water and pure air are its essentials. Wherever there is impurity, it
must be washed away and got rid of. Thus sanitary science is one of the
simplest and most intelligible of all the branches of human knowledge.
Perhaps it is because of this, that, like most common things, it has
continued to receive so little attention. Many still think that it
requires no science at all to ventilate a chamber, to clean out a drain,
and to keep house and person free from uncleanness.
Sanitary science may be regarded as an unsavoury subject. It deals with
dirt and its expulsion--from the skin, from the house, from the street,
from the city.
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