Functions of the Preventive Service Minister and Health Minster (Bentham)

Source: Bentham’s Constitutional Code

Section V.: Preventive Service Minister.

Enactive.

Art. 1. To the Preventive Service Minister, it belongs to give, under the Prime Minister, execution and effect to all ordinances of the Legislature, in so far as they have for their object the prevention of calamity; or of delinquency, otherwise than by exercise of the functions belonging to the Judiciary.

Enactive.

Art. 2. To this purpose, it belongs to him, under the direction of the Prime Minister, to exercise, as to all persons in so far as employed in the Preventive Service, the locative, suppletive, directive and dislocative functions; as to his own office, the self-suppletive function; as to things, in so far as thus employed, the procurative, custoditive, applicative, reparative, transformative, and eliminative functions: as to persons and things, the inspective; as to persons, things, and occurrences, thereto belonging, the statistic, recordative, publicative, and officially-informative: as to states of things, ordinances,  and arrangements, the melioration-suggestive.

Exemplificational.

Art. 3. Examples of the principal calamities, to which prevention is capable of being applied, under the care of government, are as follows:

1. Collapsion: namely of the natural sort, in large masses, or of edifices in a ruinous state; or by means of earthquakes.
2. Inundation.
3. Conflagration.
4. Disease and mortality, the results of unhealthy and unmedicated situations.
5. Unhealthy employments, the unhealthiness of which is capable of being removed or lessened by appropriate arrangements.
6. Contagious disease.
7. Dearth and famine.

Exemplificational.

Art. 4. Examples of arrangements for the prevention or mitigation, of calamity in the above shapes, are as follows:

1. Against collapsion,—of earth, in hilly or mountainous situations, precautionary surveys: of edifices, particularly in towns, precautionary surveys: for reparation, or demolition of ruinous ones; also precautionary arrangements in the construction of new ones.
2. Against inundation,—surveys of bridges, dykes and embankments; also arrangements for the draining of lands.
3. Against conflagration,—precautionary construction of edifices: precautionary fabrication, custody and conveyance of gunpowder and other explodible substances: precautionary stowage and custody of spontaneously combustible vegetable matters in warehouses: the employment of precautionary operations and instruments in mines: Fire Insurance Associations.
4. Against suffocation in mines and manufactories,—precautionary arrangements and monitions.
5. Against disease and mortality from putrid water, naturally accumulated, drainage; from putrid water, artificially accumulated, drainage in enclosed tunnels.
6. Against disease and mortality from contagion,—temporary prevention or restriction of intercourse of persons or goods, with the persons, receptacles, or commodities, known or suspected to be the seats of a contagious disease.
7. Against disease and mortality from the consumption of articles of food or drink, in a state regarded as dangerous to health,—arrangements for preventing the vent of them.
8. Against disease and mortality, from medicinal and other drugs, liable to produce the effect of poisons,—precautionary restrictions on the vent of them: as for example, keeping them in cabinets under lock and key, with the word Poisonwritten on them.
9. Against extraordinary scarcity of necessaries,—precautionary supplies, in so far as freedom of trade is inadequate to the purpose.

Exemplificational.

Art. 5. Examples of things belonging to the department of the Preventive Service Minister are the following:

1. Things immoveable.

I. Against Delinquency, and Calamity by fire.

1. Offices for Police Directors and their subordinates.
2. Police Station-houses.
3. Receptacles for Fire-Engines, Ladders, and Fire-Escapes.

II. Against Inundation.

1. Dykes and Dams.

III. Against Contagion.

1. Lazarettos.

IV. Against extraordinary scarcity.

1. Government Magazines.

V. Things moveable.

1. Vehicles.
2. Beasts of draught and saddle.

Instructional.

Art. 6. In relation to the Defensive Force Service and the Preventive Service, the Legislature will consider, how far, by a mixture of Defensive Force Functionaries with Preventive Service Functionaries, the advantages of a stationary with those of a migratory body, may be combined, and the two branches of the official establishment rendered mutually subservient, each to the purpose for which the other is principally instituted.

Instructional.

Art. 7. Under the Legislature, this will be matter of special consideration for the Prime Minister. He will accordingly, if he sees reason, unless inhibited by the Legislature, attach from time to time, to the Preventive Service, (subjecting them for the time to the direction of the Preventive Service Minister,) certain portions of the stipendiary Defensive Force, Land or Sea Force, or both, as occasion may require.

Ratiocinative.

Art. 8. I. Advantages to the Stipendiary Defensive Force, more particularly the Land Force.

1. Those from the employment-extending principle, as per Ch. x. Defensive Force, Section 2. Leading Principles.
2. Those, from the time-occupying principle, as per Ch. x. Section 2.
3. Appropriate acquaintance with the territory in a military point of view, thence proportionable aptitude as to the purpose of defending it, against an invading enemy. In point of extent, the value of this advantage would increase, with the frequency of the migration. Nor would it proportionably decrease, in respect of correctness and completeness, within each portion of territory: for, sufficient for the military purpose would be a much smaller portion of the time of these military auxiliaries, than would naturally be applied to the use of the Preventive Service.

Ratiocinative.

Art. 9. II. Advantages to the Preventive Service.

1. Those resulting from the natural pre-eminence of the military functionaries, in respect of the qualities of vigilance, punctuality of obedience, promptitude of obedience, activity, simultaneity of obedience, and intrepidity.
2. Those resulting from the additional security, which such admixture will naturally give, against sinister connexions, between the functionaries and the internal adversaries, against whom they are employed to combat. Of this security, the degree and value, in the case of each body, would be inversely as the length of time during which it continued stationed in the same place.

Ratiocinative.

Art. 10. There seems to be but one qualification, in respect of which, functionaries belonging to the Defensive Force Service, land and sea, according to local circumstances, included, would not naturally possess more aptitude, with relation to the Preventive Service, than those would who are exclusively attached to this last-mentioned service: and this is local knowledge, including that of the characters, family circumstances, abodes and haunts of individual delinquents, and persons most in danger of falling into delinquency. But if of each military functionary’s time, one portion being employed in active service in this shape, another were employed in the performance of the military exercises, appropriate aptitude with relation to military service, might thus be continued unimpaired. As to the advantage derived from acquaintance with the characters, family circumstances, abodes and haunts of delinquents and persons liable to become delinquents, a due admixture of the migratory, with the stationary functionaries, might afford this advantage, and at the same time obviate the danger from sinister connexion.

Exemplificational.

Art. 11. Examples of subject-matters of such local knowledge, are—

1. Statistic circumstances: sites of the several habitations, thence abodes, of the respective householders, with their inmates of both sexes and all ages. Of these particulars, an adequate degree of notoriety would be necessitated, and effected, for the purposes of Election Service, as per Election Code, Section 10.
2. Moral circumstances: disposition of the several inhabitants, as resulting from habitual sources of livelihood and other occupations.
3. Circumstances purely topographical. Condition of the territory in respect of plains, hills, and mountains,—rivers, lakes, and seas,—soil, whether sandy, clayey, chalky, gravelly, rocky, &c., and natural productions,—ground woody, or woodless.

Of the knowledge of these last-mentioned particulars, the use is, the giving facility to the eventual accersition or say hither-calling, of individuals whose attendance is required, with or without such or such articles of his property, for the purpose of evidence or justiciability, and in case of need, the prehension of the supposed delinquent, or other defendant.

With the benefit of all these helps, scarcely would any band of malefactors be formed, whom the functionaries so employed, would not know where to find, together with the appropriate evidence requisite for their conviction.

Ratiocinative.

Art. 12. A consideration that will not escape observation, is—that, as to seduction of functionaries by sinister connexion with delinquents, the danger is considerably greater, in the case of contrabandists, than in the case of delinquents at large. In the case of the contrabandist, the mischief produced, is not so obvious and conspicuous, as in the case of most other sorts of malefactors. The community is indeed injured: but the community is an ideal and invisible being, of too aërial a texture, to be grasped by a mind of ordinary texture: the fair trader injured is indeed a real and visible being, but seldom is he determinate. Seldom is it known to what contrabandist any fair trader is indebted for the suffering which, by this or that one of his operations, the contrabandist  has produced. The consequence is—that, against the contrabandist, no such antipathy points itself as against the robber, the thief, or even the obtainer by false pretences: much less, any such antipathy as has place in the case of the housebreaker, or the assassin, in whose instance homicide has been employed, either for perpetration, or for concealment, of an enterprise of indiscriminating depredation.

Section X.: Health Minister.

Enactive.

Art. 1. To the Health Minister it belongs, under the Prime Minister, (frequently in conjunction with the Preventive Service Minister,) to give execution and effect to all legislative ordinances, having for their special object, the preservation of the national health.

Enactive.

Art. 2. To this purpose, under the direction of the Prime Minister, it belongs to him to exercise,—in relation to all persons, in so far as employed under him, the locative, suppletive, directive, and dislocative functions;—as to his own office, the self-suppletive function;—as to things, in so far as thus employed, but in concert with the Finance Minister, the procurative, custoditive, applicative, reparative, transformative, and eliminative functions;—as to persons and things, the inspective;—as to persons, things, and occurrences thereto belonging, the statistic, recordative, publicative, and officially-informative;—as to state of things, ordinances and arrangements, the melioration-suggestive.

Enactive.

Art. 3. So, in relation to all such institutions and establishments, as, for this purpose, are on foot or in progress, for the use of the public, at the expense or under the direction of the Sublegislatures, or of individuals, or bodies incorporated or otherwise associated,—the inspective, statistic, and melioration-suggestive functions.

Enactive.

Art. 4. To the Health Minister, in relation to all medical functionaries serving in the land, or say army branch of the Stipendiary Defensive Force,—belongs moreover the locative, suppletive, directive, dislocative, and suspensive functions: the functionaries so located by him being at all times subject also to the exercise of the suspensive function, exerciseable for special reasons, by the commanding officers of the several corps serving separately, from the grade of colonel of a regiment upwards. For the manner in which the suspensive function will, in this case, be exercised, see Ch. ix. Ministers collectively, Section 21, Oppression obviated.

Enactive.

Art. 5. So, as to all medical functionaries, serving in the sea, or say navy branch of the Stipendiary Defensive Force: the functionaries so by him located, being at all times subject also to the exercise of the suspensive function, exercisible for special reasons, by the commanding officers of the several navigable vessels, in and for which the several medical [444] functionaries are at the time in question serving.

Instructional.

Art. 6. For the consideration of the Legislature it will be, whether and how far the provision in Arts. 4, 5, shall be applied to the preventive service subdepartment: regard being had to the composition of this branch of the official establishment, and the distribution made of the functionaries thereto belonging.

Enactive.

Art. 7. So, as to all medical functionaries, serving under the Indigence Relief Minister,—it belongs to the Health Minister to exercise the locative, suppletive, directive, dislocative, and suspensive functions: the functionaries so by him located, being at all times subject also to the suspensive function, exercisable, for special reasons, by the functionary having charge of the establishment, for the service of which such medical functionaries have respectively been located.

Enactive. Expositive.

Art. 8. So, in relation to the things immoveable following, and the things moveable thereto respectively belonging,—to him it belongs, always in concert with the Finance Minister, to exercise the several functions procurative, custoditive, applicative, reparative, transformative, and eliminative: that is to say—

1. Hospitals,maintained at Government expense: army and navy hospitals, and preventive service hospitals, if any, included.
2. Lazarettos:that is to say places, within the limits of which, for the purpose of ascertaining the presence or absence of contagious disorders, persons, or property, or both together, are confined: in this case in concert with the Foreign Relation Minister likewise.
3. Laboratories,if any such there are, in which medicines, for the use of the stipendiary branch of the land and sea defensive services, are prepared.

Enactive.

Art. 9. In regard to the other things immoveable following, so far as regards health, as also the persons therein residing, the inspective function: that is to say—

1. Prisons:and all other places, in which any person is kept under confinement.
2. In particular, madhouses,at whose expense whatsoever and under whose care soever kept up, whether at the expense of the public at large, or that of the sublegislatures,—of bodies corporate, or otherwise associated, or of individuals.
3. Edifices,with their appurtenances, belonging to the field of service of the Indigence Relief Minister.
4. Edifices, with their appurtenances, belonging to the field of service of the Education Minister.

Enactive.

Art. 10. So, as to the contents of all shops and storehouses, in which drugs, designed to be employed for medical purposes, are kept for sale, or otherwise for distribution: more particularly with reference to the precautionary arrangements directed to be observed by the Preventive Service Minister as per Section 5, Article 4, relating to the sale of poisons.

Enactive.

Art. 11. So, as to the contents of all shops and storehouses, in which instruments, designed for chirurgical purposes, are kept for sale, or otherwise, for distribution.

Enactive.

Art. 12. In particular as to all such medicaments and drugs designed to be employed for medical purposes, as, from any general office or repository, have been conveyed or are appointed or designed to be conveyed, to any of the appropriate stations, in the Army Service, Navy Service, or the Indigence-Relief Hospital Service.

Enactive.

Art. 13. So, as to persons, things and occurrences, the statistic and recordative functions: as to states of things, ordinances, and arrangements, the melioration-suggestive function.

Enactive. Instructional.

Art. 14. In addition to the above generally-applying functions, belong to this Minister the specially-applying functions following:—

1. Authoritatively-eliminative function.

In the exercise of this same function, subject to appeal to the Judge immediate, he causes to be employed the appropriate means, for the elimination of all such medicaments, as, by deterioration, natural or accidental, have been rendered unfit for medical service: and on this occasion, takes care that they be either destroyed, or if put to use for any other purpose, so prepared for such use, as not to be capable of being, in their relatively unapt state, applied to any medical purpose.

Enactive. Expositive. Instructional.

Art. 15. II. Aqua-procurative, or say Water-supply-securing function. In the exercise of this function, he will take for the subject-matter of examination, the supply of water which has or may have place in such towns as the Prime Minister (consideration had of their extent and the density of their population) shall, for this purpose, have given to him in charge: on which occasion, he will include in his observation the quantity, quality, and proportionality of distribution, of the subject-matter of this supply.

Enactive. Expositive. Exemplificational.

Art. 16. III. Malaria-obviating, or anti-malarial [445] function. To this function exercise will be given, by keeping under review all such local situations, as are liable to harbour or give rise to exhalations detrimental to health.

Of the sources of such exhalations, examples are the following:—

1. Lands which, to whatsoever proprietors belonging, are habitually or occasionally covered with stagnant water.
2. Mines, considered in respect of such inflammable or dangerously respirable gases, as they are liable to contain.
3. Common sewers and drains.
4. Places of interment.
5. Theatres and other similarly crowded places of public entertainment.
6. Manufacturing establishments, considered in respect of the several ways by which they are liable to deteriorate the air, by the several modes in which the operations belonging to them are respectively carried on.

Enactive. Expositive. Instructional.

Art. 17. IV. Health-regarding-evidence-elicitative-and-recordative function. To this function exercise will be given by the elicitation and recordation of the documents following:—

1. Bills of Mortality. The matter belonging to these documents he will receive from the Local Registrars of the several Bis-subdistricts: in virtue of their several functions,—death-recordative, marriage-recordative, birth-recordative, maturity-recordative, and insanity-recordative, as per Ch. xxvi. Local Registrars, Sections 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. On this occasion, separate notice will be taken, and report made of the state of mortality and disease, in the several Hospitals and Establishments, under the management or inspection of the Army Minister, the Navy Minister, the Preventive Service Minister, the Indigence Relief Minister, and the Education Minister.
2. From the several different places, Registers of the Weather, in so far as habitually framed and preserved in the several establishments above-mentioned; also from any other public sources, from whence they may conveniently be procurable: and from private sources, so far as procurable from those sources, with the free consent of the individuals interested.

Enactive. Expositive.

Art. 18. V. Appropriate oustoditive function. In the exercise of this function, he has charge in chief of all medical museums, belonging to Government.

Instructional. Exemplificational.

Art. 19. Of the contents of a Medical Museum, examples are the following:—

1. Anatomical Preparations.
2. Chirurgical Instruments.
3. Specimens of the Materia Medica, preserved for standards of comparison.
4. Herbaries.
5. Medical Books and Graphical imitations.
6. Registers of the Weather, and Instruments for the formation of such Registers.
7. Mortality Reports, as above.
8. Models of the human form, in its natural state.
9. Models of distortions.

Enactive. Expositive.

Art. 20. VI. Aptitude-securing function. In the exercise of this function, to the Health Minister it will belong to watch over the aptitude and efficiency of the application made, of the Probationary Examination system, (as per Ch. ix. Ministers collectively, Section 16, Locable who,) with reference to all aspirants to those offices, the functions of which, are exercises of the art of medicine, in any of its several branches, and to whatsoever subject applied: in such sort that, by the operation of sinister interest,—whether self-regarding, sympathetic, or antipathetic,—no person relatively unapt be admitted, or relatively apt excluded: mindful, that in self-regarding interest, are included not only love of money, but love of ease.

He will, therefore, preside at all such examinations, having for Assessors, persons three or five, elected by all who, in consequence of Examinations antecedently undergone by them, have received certificates of appropriate aptitude.

Enactive. Expositive.

Art. 21. VII. Professional confederacy-checking function. To the Health Minister, under the direction of the Prime Minister and the Legislature,—and with the assistance of the Public-Opinion Tribunal, as per Ch. v. Constitutive, Sections 4, 5, it will especially belong, to be upon the watch against all injury to the health of the community, by the operation of particular interests, in the breasts of medical practitioners, at the expense of public interest: (and, as occasion calls, to make report accordingly:) for example, by associations among themselves for the formation of regulations and arrangements, express or tacit, concerning division of labour, rate of payment, terms or mode of attendance, or otherwise.

Enactive. Instructional.

Art. 22. VIII. Appropriate-publication function. To this function he will give exercise, by giving, to the result of the exercise given to the several preceding functions, the utmost publicity that can be given to them, consistently with a due regard to public economy in respect of the expense, and to the feelings of persons subjected to the exercise of his several functions: yet not so as to give concealment to delinquency, in whatever shape exemplified.