The Medical Officer of Health for St. Pancras made a calculation that nearly 1,200 deaths in the parish in 1858 were due to causes which might have been prevented by sanitary improvements. "To every death we may safely assume more than thirty cases of illness. This gives us 36,000 cases of preventable disease in the year." "You will see," wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. James' (1856), "that by diminishing death and disease, you are diminishing poverty and want.... The sanitary question lies at the root of all others. It is a national one and a religious one. It is true that in the exercise of your powers you will often be met by the assertion of the rights of property, but the right of life stands before the right of property, and it is this recognition of the sacredness of human life that lies at the foundation of sanitary legislation." The Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel wrote:-- "I have in this report, as in duty bound, spoken plainly; if in the opinion of some members of the Board too plainly, my apology is--the deep sense I entertain of the importance of sanitary progress; for upon the success that shall attend the labours of those engaged in this most sacred cause depends the improvement of the social, moral, and intellectual condition of the people." And the Medical Officer of Health for St. Giles' made this pathetic appeal for action:-- "While you are listening to the remainder of this report, I trust you will hold in your mind how many lives are being sacrificed every month to deficiencies in sanitary arrangements." It is only here and there in the earlier reports of the Medical Officers of Health that specific mention is made of intemperance, but every reference to the subject showed how largely "drink" affected the sanitary condition of the people and intensified and complicated the evil conditions in which the people were placed, and rendered any amelioration, physical, moral, or religious, infinitely more difficult. It was becoming more and more generally recognised that a very large proportion of the deaths and of disease were preventable. "Any skilled eye glancing over the mortality tables will observe that a considerable number of deaths might have been prevented." "We are now to a great extent aware," wrote the Medical Officer of Health for St. Saviour's (1856), "of the physical conditions on which the lives of individuals and communities depend." The Medical Officer of Health for Fulham wrote in 1857:-- "Sanitary science and experience have full clearly proved to us how great an extent the prevention of disease and its extension rests with us." But against contagion and infection no precautions whatever were taken, and so disease was sown broadcast throughout the community, and death followed. As to suggested remedies and action there was a chorus of absolute unanimity upon some points:--