Abstract
AT the congress of the Sanitary Institute recently held at Glasgow, a large number of sanitary officials, delegates from sanitary authorities, and others interested in public health matters assembled, and a busy four days of discussions were relieved by a generous programme of local entertainments. Glasgow is an excellent centre for such a meeting. The hospitality of the city is proverbial, and the enlightened enterprise of the corporation and its officials in dealing with the sanitary needs of “The Second City in the Empire” is generally recognised. The city abounds in interest to those who appreciate what a far-sighted and energetic civic management of affairs has achieved in the direction of solving the many public health problems which present themselves in every large industrial community. An enlightened municipality has provided an excellent system of electric trams, and acquired its own water supply and lighting; four public abattoirs have been established, and private slaughter-houses abolished; and hospital accommodation amounting to 1 beds to every 1000 of the population has been provided for the infectious sick. But the energy and wisdom which have characterised the civic management of affairs is in no respect better evidenced than by the circumstance that in comparatively recent years no fewer than fifteen parks or open spaces, together amounting to more than 1000 acres in area, have been procured as lungs for the city. There is, indeed, no form of municipal enterprise in the interest of public health, however recent or advanced, which has not been adopted and put to the test in Glasgow; and hence the attractiveness of the city to the hygienist and to the earnest municipal representative. Model lodgings for the poor and labourers' dwellings now replace some of the insanitary property which has been demolished; the corporation owns a municipal infants' milk depot, reception houses for the temporary detention of those who have been in close contact with certain of the infectious diseases, municipal chemical and bacteriological laboratories, public baths and wash-houses, and it has recently had the courage to demand the closing of the public, houses at 10 p.m. Drunkenness is very prevalent in Glasgow, and the more drunkenness can be reduced the easier does the solution become of most public health problems.
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The Health Congress at Glasgow . Nature 70, 357–358 (1904). https://doi.org/10.1038/070357a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/070357a0