In the midst of proceedings thus tending not more to the public good than to the true interests of the officers of the department, other measures were taken by which the welfare of the latter was yet more directly and obviously promoted. One of these was the formal appointment of a medical gentleman to take, in addition to some other duties, the regular charge of the health of the large number of letter-carriers attached to the chief office. The duties of this officer--of course with proper assistance--were subsequently extended to the homes of invalids, and also to the staff at each of the new district offices. Similar appointments were afterwards made at Dublin and Edinburgh. Means were also taken to supply the men with pure water. Serious mischief had arisen, especially in times when cholera or diarrhœa was epidemic, from their resort to a neighbouring pump attached to Goldsmiths' Hall; the water of which, though most attractive in appearance and taste, was found by analysis to be very deleterious in quality. In the erection of the new district offices much care was taken to avoid those bad internal arrangements--alike destructive to rapid action and injurious to health--which want of either attention or experience had introduced at St. Martin's-le-Grand. The general health of the department was in danger of being lowered by the new standard of acquirement that had been established for admission to the service. The persons best fitted for letter-carriers' duties in a physical point of view are obviously those whose previous occupation has inured them to labour of body and endurance of weather; but such persons were, in effect, to a great extent excluded by the new educational requirements, which, on the other hand, gave, for the most part, easy admission to shopmen, clerks, domestic servants, and others, but little accustomed to out-door exercise. To remedy this, the Postmaster-General (the Duke of Argyll) requested the Civil Service Commissioners to adopt a somewhat lower standard of acquirement, and at the same time authorized the chief medical officer to subject all candidates for the office of letter-carrier to stricter test as regards bodily strength. The application of this higher physical standard caused the rejection of at least one candidate out of four.[164] By all these measures, the health of the department, which, with every allowance for the favourable age of its officers, stood even at the beginning of the period in very advantageous comparison with that of London generally, was gradually raised to a very high standard. One further improvement, however, seems very desirable, though the means of effecting it have not yet been found. In the year 1857, Dr. Lewis, the chief medical officer, having reported on the sanitary condition of the dwellings of the letter-carriers, sorters, and messengers attached to the chief office,[165] the Annual Report makes this comment:--