immediate and startling reduction in child mortality, leading to
further legislation increasing the quantity of brandy to a
gallon. Not until the brandy craze had been carried to a point at
which the direct harm done by it would outweigh the incidental
good, would an anti-brandy party be listened to. That incidental
good would be the substitution of attention to the general health
of children for the neglect which is now the rule so long as the
child is not actually too sick to run about and play as usual.
Even if this attention were confined to the children's teeth,
there would be an improvement which it would take a good deal of
brandy to cancel.

This imaginary case explains the actual case of the sanitary
appliances which our local sanitary authorities prescribe today
and condemn tomorrow. No sanitary contrivance which the mind of
even the very worst plumber can devize could be as disastrous as
that total neglect for long periods which gets avenged by
pestilences that sweep through whole continents, like the black
death and the cholera. If it were proposed at this time of day to
discharge all the sewage of London crude and untreated into the
Thames, instead of carrying it, after elaborate treatment, far
out into the North Sea, there would be a shriek of horror from
all our experts. Yet if Cromwell had done that instead of doing
nothing, there would probably have been no Great Plague of
London. When the Local Health Authority forces every householder
to have his sanitary arrangements thought about and attended to
by somebody whose special business it is to attend to such
things, then it matters not how erroneous or even directly
mischievous may be the specific measures taken: the net result at
first is sure to be an improvement. Not until attention has been