Into the hands of this new minister--advised, perhaps, for such purposes by some permanent commission[9] of skilled person, would devolve the guardianship of public health against combined commercial interests, or incompetent administration. He would provide securities for excluding sulphur from our gas, and animalcules from our water. He would come into relation with all Local Improvement Boards, in respect of the sanitary purposes of their existence. To him we should look, to settle at least for all practical purposes the polemics of drainage and water-supply; to form opinions which might guide Parliament, whether street sewers really require to be avenues for men, whether hard water really be good enough for all ordinary purposes, whether cisternage really be indispensable to an urban water-supply. [9] There are many instances in my mind, some already adverted to, where the existence of a standing jury for scientific--especially for sanitary, purposes might be of great utility. It is an organisation which prevails extensively in France, under the name of _Conseils de Salubrité_; forming, in most of the large towns there, a constant board of reference for the municipality, in respect of sanitary regulations. _Mutatis mutandis_, it might become invaluable as an English institution, in respect of many matters touched upon in this sketch; and perhaps with some division of duties, into such as would best belong to a General Board of the kind, and such as might properly be vested in Local Boards. To determine the indispensable conditions of healthy lodgment; to examine the influence of trades and occupations, and to devise the regulations they may require, for the neighbourhood’s sake, or for their operatives’; to supervise the sale of food and drugs; to be cognisant of medical matters; would seem, either locally or generally, to require the co-operations of several skilled persons. But, though I have spoken of such, as indispensable jurors for these subjects, I do not forget that other interests than those of life may need to be consulted. For the fair representation of these, the lay faculty of _educated common-sense_ will fulfil an inestimable usefulness, if it may be there to mediate between science, which is sometimes crotchety, and trade, which is sometimes selfish. Organisations against epidemic diseases--questions of quarantine--laws for vaccination, and the like, would obviously lie within his province; and thither, perhaps, also his colleagues might be glad to transfer many of those medical questions which now belong to other departments of the executive--the sanitary regulation of emigrant ships, the ventilation of mines, the medical inspection of factories and prisons, the insecurities of railway traffic, _et hoc genus omne_.