has what he says he has, a conscientious objection. Then having done that I think it is no use going on any further. I do not dispute now whether a man deserves to be further punished, but I say, that it does not produce any good effect; and the only other course you can pursue-and you must be prepared to do it, or I think it is useless to discuss the matter any further-the only other thing you can do is to take the child out of the parents' hands and vaccinate it compulsorily by the State. The question is whether that is a justifiable, and if it is, whether, in these days, it is a practicable course to adopt.

Prof. G. H. PHILIPSON, M.D. (Newcastle), seconded the motion. He said; The Sanitary Institute could not have selected one more acceptable to them to occupy the important position of President of this Section than Prof. Corfield. The President has chosen a very appropriate subject, and he has treated it with great ability. I take this opportunity of tendering my thanks to Prof. Corfield for his kind allusion to the efforts I made from 1863 to 1870, respecting the notification and registration of disease. It was through the profession of the Northern Counties that I was able to present those reports on the prevalent diseases in Newcastle and Gateshead, and which were embodied in the reports of the Northumberland and Durham Medical Society. I must also thank the President for the kind reference he made to my distinguished colleague, Dr. Armstrong; and, on behalf of the Medical College of the University of Durham, I tender my thanks to Prof. Corfield for his allusion to their efforts respecting the advancement of education in this College, and the Examinations in connection with Hygiene, especially the Degree of Bachelor of Hygiene which has been established by the Durham University.

Surg.-Major HUTTON (Leamington), briefly supported the motion, which was carried.

SECTION II.

ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE.

ADDRESS

BY SIR ANDREW NOBLE, K.C.B., F.R.S., F.R.A.S., F.C.S., M.Inst.C.E.,

PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION.

In addressing you to-day, I must first ask you to extend to me that kind indulgence which the expert is always ready to show to the layman, and to forgive me if I speak on general rather than on special subjects. Although I am an engineer, and proud of the designation, I have never devoted special attention to that branch of engineering with which this Congress is more immediately concerned. I say "special" attention advisedly, for it is quite impossible for any man of ordinary intelligence to avoid paying some attention to such vital questions as are involved in sanitary engineering. Indeed, the strides which have been made by that science in recent years are so remarkable as to thrust themselves upon the notice of even the most careless or the most absorbed. There is a proverb which says a man at forty is either a fool or a physician; and a man of my age, who has lived in a good many houses belonging to other people, and built several of his own, must surely be a fool if he be not something of a sanitary engineer.

I am old enough to claim to have seen the very beginnings of sanitary engineering in the modern sense of that term, for I think that we may fairly attribute its inception to the passing of two measures in 1847 and 1848, the Town Improvement Act, and the Public Health Act. These Acts were the outcome of the rapid growth of great English towns and the prevalence of zymotic disease. Certain architects, engineers, and mechanics, were then led to devote special attention to the practical methods of ameliorating public health, and proved to be the forerunners of the sanitary engineers as we have them

to-day, a class as necessary as able, and as appreciated as any in the community.

Before that time no serious attention had been given to sanitation. Everything that was done in that direction was done by rule of thumb; and if any sanitary improvements were made at all, it was only in special instances where abominable smells or virulent outbreaks of disease forced the hands of those in authority. Commissions, appointed after the passing of those Acts, to inquire into the causes of the terribly high death-rates which then ruled found that everything was wrong. The drainage of private houses, which, as the unit, must always remain by far the most important item of any sanitary scheme, was altogether defective; the houses themselves were generally badly designed from a sanitary point of view. There was, as a rule, no public water supply, and the wells from which most houses drew their water were contaminated. There was no comprehensive scheme of town drainage. But even after the awakening, progress was at first very slow, because everything had to be done ab initio. Knowledge of this kind can only be gained through experiment, and experiment implies a considerable amount of failure. Looking back from the standpoint of our present knowledge, we are surprised that so many of the early schemes of drainage and water supply should have proved as successful as they did. But among the successes there were a large percentage of failures, some of them gigantic failures, involving the waste of very large sums of money. Such unfortunate enterprises were of course discouraging, and in spite of the stimulus to sanitary reform given by the great outbreaks of cholera in 1849 and 1854, comparatively little was done in the first years that followed the Improvement and the Health Act. In 1866 came a slighter irruption of cholera, and from that date I think it may be said that sanitary progress doubled its pace. It is the last quarter of a century that has witnessed those improvements and sweeping sanitary reforms that have placed England so far in advance of any other country as regards hygienic matters.

My business has compelled me to travel much, and for many years I have had exceptional opportunities of observing Continental life. I do not say that I have given special study to a comparison of their sanitary arrangements with ours; but from a consideration of health statistics, and from the obvious facts that strike a commonly observant traveller, I have no doubt at all that we are immeasurably in front of our neighbours in these respects. The Continent, I should say, as regards sanitation, is generally in much the same position as was England in the sixties. Of course there are degrees, and

Germany and France are in advance of Italy and Spain. But even Germany, with all her incomparable scientific accuracy and research, is only now awaking to the necessity of vigorous action in this direction; and when the outbreak of cholera at Hamburg in 1892 threw a strong light on that city, abuses were then made visible that would certainly not now be possible in any English town. And in speaking of the cholera outbreak at Hamburg, I may be permitted perhaps to remark that it taught a lesson as to the importance of the filtration of the water supply of towns such as never was taught elsewhere so clearly. Taking the two districts of Hamburg and Altona, which in reality form with Wandsbeck one great town called Hamburg, the water supply of Hamburg proper was drawn from the river Elbe above the town where the stream is presumably little contaminated by sewage; the water for Altona was taken from the river Elbe below the town after it had received all the liquid and focal refuse of 800,000 people. Prima facie one would suppose that the Altona district would have suffered the most from cholera if there was to be any difference at all. But the contaminated water of Altona was filtered, and the purer water of Hamburg was not filtered, before it was delivered to the town. The remarkable results are best described in Dr. Koch's own words: 66 On both sides of the boundary between Hamburg and Altona," he says, "the conditions of soil, buildings, sewage, everything shortly of importance in this respect were the same; and yet the cholera which ravaged unfiltered Hamburg went right up to the walls of filtered Altona and there stopped. In one street, which for a long way forms the boundary, there was cholera on the Hamburg side, whereas the Altona side was free from it. Indeed, in the case of a group of houses on the so-called Hamburger Platz, the cholera marked out the boundary better than anyone having the map of the frontier between Hamburg and Altona could have done. Here we have to do with an experiment in sanitation performed on an immense population, and that experiment, in spite of its gigantic proportions, complied with all the conditions which one requires from an exact and perfect experiment in a laboratory."

In these days of fierce competition, when Continental rivalry is such a bugbear in almost every trade, it is satisfactory to find that England more than holds her own in the field of sanitary engineering. I wish I could say the same of that branch of the engineering profession with which I am myself more closely connected; but a variety of circumstances unfortunately combine to render this impossible. The manufacture of the various sanitary appliances is in itself an enormous industry, and

on the sanitary arrangements of almost all the great Continental hotels may be seen repeated, over and over again the familiar names of English makers. Some of these names are little short of household words, and I have been interested in advertisements of foreign hotels to see, more than once, a prominent statement that the sanitary arrangements are by so and so (naming some great English firm) as a practical guarantee of their hygienic efficiency. In the whole of the vehicles of the International Sleeping Car Company, which are found whereever railways themselves are found, and which travel from one end of the civilized world to the other, you will see all the lavatory appliances supplied by a celebrated Birmingham firm. This may seem a petty fact enough, but it is nevertheless a curious tribute to the proficiency which English makers have reached in these matters.

After I had accepted your very flattering invitation to be President for this year of the mechanical section of your Society, and found too late that an inaugural address was expected of me, I began casting about for some subject on which a layman might venture to speak before a company of experts. The first thing that struck me was the enormous extent of the field covered by sanitary science, trenching as it does on the province of the architect and the artist, the engineer proper, and the doctor. It is indeed curious to reflect how very dependent on one another are the doctor and the sanitary engineer. The plague of small-pox, which is, we hope, just lifting from Gloucester, has shown that all the advantages of modern sanitation will not avail where medical precautions are neglected; and the doctor on the other hand will find his skill and medicine impotent, if his patient is living in an ill-drained and ill-ventilated house.

The subjects which might be legitimately reviewed before your Congress are numberless as they are important; but it would be affectation on my part to attempt to speak on any purely technical questions. They are better left for departmental treatment by specialists where more opportunity is afforded for discussion than can be the case with a presidential address. But whatever one may say, technical details cannot be altogether eliminated; and so I hope that if you should find me tripping, you will exercise forbearance and regard me as wishing, at least, to approach the subject in a general manner and from a layman's point of view.

There are many problems arising out of the growth of population which call to-day for the attention of the sanitary engineer, but none are more urgent, I think, than that of the water supply for large towns. There is no concealing the fact