The sanitary idea at length had its triumph in the enactment of the Public Health Act of 1848, and the appointment of a General Board of Health (of which Mr. Chadwick was a member) to superintend its administration.  Numerous supplemental measures have since been enacted, with the view of carrying into practical effect the sanitary principles adopted by the Board.  Reports continued to be published, from time to time, full of valuable information:  for instance, in reference to the application of Sewage water to agricultural purposes; on Epidemic Cholera; on Quarantine; on Drainage; on Public Lodging-houses; and the like.  The sanitary movement, in short, became a “great fact;” and that it is so, we have mainly to thank Edwin Chadwick—­the missionary of the Sanitary idea.  It is true he was eventually dismissed from his position of influence at the Board of Health,—­partly through spleen, but chiefly because of his own unaccommodating nature,—­unaccommodating especially to petty local authorities and individual interests opposed to the public good.  But with all thinking and impartial men, his character stands as high as it ever did.  At all events, his works remain.

We do not know a more striking instance than that presented by this gentleman’s career, of the large amount of good which a man strongly possessed by a beneficent idea can accomplish, provided he have only the force of purpose and perseverance to follow it up.  Though Mr. Chadwick has not been an actual legislator, he has nevertheless been the mover of more wise measures than any legislator of our time.  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.  It is comprised in the words—­wherever there is dirt, get rid of it instantly; and with cleanliness let there be a copious supply of pure water and of pure air for the purposes of human health.