THE BRITISH SANITARY CONGRESS.

ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT GALTON.


The Congress of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain was opened in
Newcastle on September 26. The inaugural public meeting was held in the
Town Hall. Prof. De Chaumont presided, in the place of the ex-President,
Lord Fortescue, and introduced Captain Galton, the new President.

The President commenced his inaugural address by thanking, in the name
of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, the Mayor and Corporation
of Newcastle for the invitation to visit this important industrial
metropolis of Northern England. The invitation, he said, was the more
satisfactory because Newcastle was advancing in the van of sanitary
improvement, and was thus proving the interest of this great city in
a subject which was contributing largely to the moral and material
progress of the nation. Of all the definite questions which were made
the subject of the instruction by congresses at the present time, there
was scarcely one which deserved a greater share of attention than that
which called that congress together--namely, the subject of the public
health.

Within the last half century the whole community had been gradually
awakening to the importance of a knowledge of the laws of health, and
the energies of some of the ablest intellects in the world had been
employed in investigating the causes of disease, and in endeavoring to