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

186
to the Daily News on October 5 the need for cleanliness , effh:ient
drainage and immediate mass vaccination, citing Denison's lecture on
11Se\'l'er.age and Drainage'' in 1853 as his authority.
At the next meeting of the Royal Society on October 13
Hall read a letter of apoogy to Bedford , disclaiming any intention to
appear personal in his remarks, and expressing his wil lingness to withdraw
from his paper any expression consiered personally offensive to him.
However, Bedford 's well-directed attack was effective;
the Council
decided it was undesirable for the interests of Tasmania that the paper
be printed.
In an effort to change this decision, Miller pointed out
that the Council o.ught to have indicated the matter or passages which
they considered obj ectionable, and asked Hall to cancel or correct them .
He moved ''that the paper stand over for discussion at a special general
meeti.ng on 0 cto b er 26th 11 • This was agreed. 5
Exactly what occurred at this meeting is not clear.
As the
press were excluded from all Royal Society meetings, much to Miller's
cagrin, the only report of the proceedings which appeared in the
Courier on November 18 was written by Milligan himself.
Hall, in a
letter first to the Courier which refused to pub lish it, and then to the
Daily News , obj ected stro . ngly to the fact that twenty three days had
elapsed between the time ofthe meeting and the date of the publication
of the report;
in addition, he complained that Milli gan had
.... perverted, mutilated and misrepresented his sentiments ,
statements and arguments . . ... The inj ury done to the cause
of science and truth by the exclusion of the press from the
meetings of the Royal Society could not be more forcibly
illustrated than by the very tardy and most erroneous report
of the Scretary furnished to your paper.
He accused Milligan of an utter reversal of the statements emphatically
and repeatedly urged by him in his Medico-Vital Statistics paper .
For years I have been strenuously maintaining, in numerous
pub lished communications , that Tasmania possesses one of
the most salubrious climates in the world . The very gist
of my paper is founded on this fact, and the proofs to
estab lish it are elaborated \·lith the most minute care and
accurate research . The excessive mortality of Hobart Town ,
Launceston and the Orphan School, it is shown, has arisen
from hygienic mismanagement and sanitary neglect . Scarcely
a page of my voluminous paper but what enforces in the most
indisputable data, the important fact of the climatic
superiority of Tasmania over our native land .
5
Courier , October 21, 1857.