“It always appeared most extraordinary and ‘unjustifiable,’” says Dr Gillkrest, “that on this kind of inquiry, which was intended by the Secretary of State to be so beneficial to the interests of humanity, the Superintendent of Quarantine, as president, should have assumed the right in several instances of selecting the witnesses, which obviously prejudiced the question, and by which much of the truth was intercepted. “Several medical officers of the garrison who had much experience respecting the progress of the epidemic, were either not examined at all, or only in a very imperfect manner. I was among the latter, being surgeon to the 43rd Regiment, and present during the whole epidemic. After a very limited examination, I officially informed the President, by letter, that I had much to state; but, like others, I was not called afterwards. “From what I felt due to the service of which I had been a member for so many years, as well as the cause of truth, I was induced to protest against such proceedings, which protest will, I presume, be found with the documents connected with the inquiry forwarded from Gibraltar to the Colonial Office in London.” Complaints were further made of the mode of collecting the evidence adopted on this occasion, which was such as to excite the suspicion of some of the members of the Commission, and to lead eventually to their condemnation of it, and their repudiation of the Report which was founded upon it.[38] Footnote 38: _See_ Letter of Sir George Murray, and reply of Colonel Chapman, the Civil Secretary, p. 274;—also Report of Judge Howell, Second Report on Quarantine of the General Board of Health, Appendix II., pp. 245, 273. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ APPENDIX. A return of the Sanitary Works carried out in those towns to which the Public Health Act has been applied, was laid on the table of the House of Commons, on the 12th of April last, and ordered to be printed (No. 176, Session 1866). In view of the threatened Epidemic, however, the unusual labour cast upon the Local Government Office,—now charged with the superintendence of Local Boards of Health,—must render it improbable that time can be found to examine the proof of this important return before the end of the Session. At this still early period in the progress of Sanitary Reform, any such return must be manifestly imperfect; yet it will probably be found that ten times the sum mentioned in the text[39] is already known to have been expended on these works; and previous returns show that about a million and a half sterling has, in addition, been laid out in the provision of Extramural Cemeteries. Footnote 39: See p. 57.