One other Act[171] deserves mention before the close of this decade as it contained an unique section which required the Medical Officer of Health, on notice from the owner of property in which there are separate dwellings let for 7s. 6d. or less a week, to visit them and examine all their sanitary arrangements, &c., so as to be able to certify or not-- "That the house is so constructed as to afford suitable accommodation for each of the families or persons inhabiting it, and that due provision is made for their sanitary requirements." The certificate, if granted, was to be handed to the owner, who was then able to obtain the remission of the inhabited house duty. The owner, therefore, obtained a remission of taxes to which he was justly liable, because the dwelling which he lets was in a sanitary condition! In many ways, then, the sanitary evolution of the great city was developing satisfactorily, though by no means so rapidly as was to be desired, or as it might have developed if local governing authorities had done their duty. "The war of the community against individuals for the public good," which had now lasted for over thirty years, and the war against disease in its most dangerous forms, was being waged with good effect; and though an immensity remained to be done, a great deal had been accomplished. Larger numbers of all classes were beginning to grasp the idea and to realise that the necessity of securing and guarding the public health was not a craze or form of mental aberration, but was of absolutely vital consequence, not merely to certain classes but to the great community of the metropolis and to the nation itself, and that the future welfare and power, even the very existence, of the nation are dependent upon it. Larger numbers, too, were beginning to see who really were responsible for the widely prevalent evils, and who really were obstructing progress towards a higher standard of public health, and how little claim they had to consideration, either from the hands of the Legislature or of local administrators. The reports of the Medical Officers of Health of the latter part of this decade were distinctly more hopeful in tone, and recorded more progress than ever before. The catalogue of things in which improvement had taken place had lengthened--sewerage, water supply, the removal of refuse, paving, the regulation of offensive businesses, of cowhouses, dairies, and bakehouses, the provision of open spaces, the better disinfection of houses and of infected articles, the erection of hospitals for the isolation of cases of infectious diseases--all of which things were elemental necessaries if the public health was to be assured. In some parishes, in place of the smaller class of houses, great blocks of artizans' dwellings had been erected. In others great blocks of flats.