PDF (Whole thesis) - UTas ePrints - University of Tasmania

180
cleanliness, order and propriety maintained . No mere
casual inspector can go away from its inspection without
being favourably impressed with its management; and yet
its vital statistics reveal the sad tale I have so
carefully elucidated. If my labours are as fruitful in
results as they have been in the parallel case of. the
Convict Nurseries, in a few years the lives saved may be
counted by hundreds , and one of my life-long aspirations
will be realized. I began my professional career in
Liverpool, nearly thirty years ago, by voluntarily devoting
my ab ilities in behalf of female orphans , and with
gratifying and encouraging success; and if my life ends , as
it any day may do, whi le still, though at the antipodes ,
struggling for an equally glorious 'obj ect, I .feel that
I shall not have lived in vain, though I have not amassed
a fortune, and shall leave to my children nothing but the
example of acting in every duty of life on the principle -
''Whatever betide, for the right".
On sanitary reform he was equally firm.
The nob le exertions of our profession at home have already
achieved mighty and progressive improvements in England.
The same fearless and searching enquiry which led to such
success, should be made everywhere. No personal, political,
or any other feelings, than those of the present scientific
philanthropy ought to be an actuating motive in the research .
That it should ever be otherwise, is only to say that poor
human nature is not exempt from its inherent frailties .
The Registrar-General of England remarks in one of his
reports of last year, that the lives saved by sanitary
regulations have been doub le the number of all those sacrificed
by the war. This is a most encouraging result to stimulate
other labourers in the wide field of sanitary reform to the
exertions of the Walkers , Arnotts , Smiths , Sutherlands , Greys,
Simons , Playfairs, Duncans etc. of the medical profession.
In 1923, sixty-seven years later, J.H.L. Cumpston, the Director­
General of the Commonwealth Department of Health, writing in the
periodical Hea;Lth, named Hall "The First Australian Sanitarian" .
series of articles, declared Cumpston, showed an appreciation of sanitary
principles far in advance of anything else recorded at that time, and he
discussed water supply, ventilation, offensive trades and other similar
matters in terms which might wel l be used with slight changes in a public
Health report today .
The honour of being the first man in Australia to preach
the gospel of pub lic health with an inspired intelligence
and courageously to fight for health reforms in the face
of great obstruction belongs to Dr Edward · Swarbreck Hal l,
M.R.C.S., of Hobart .
His