The opposition to his
work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the
support given by theologians and ecclesiastics as a whole was
very far short of what it should have been. Too many of them were
occupied in that most costly and most worthless of all
processes, "the saving of souls" by the inculcation of dogma. Yet
some of the higher ecclesiastics and many of the lesser clergy
did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of them, Sidney
Godolphin Osborne, deserves lasting memory for his struggle to
make known the sanitary wants of the peasantry.
Chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the
Board of Health, and was driven out for a time for overzeal; but
from one point or another, during forty years, he fought the
opposition, developed the new work, and one of the best exhibits
of its results is shown in his address before the Sanitary
Conference at Brighton in 1888. From this and other perfectly
trustworthy sources some idea may be gained of the triumph of the
scientific over the theological method of dealing with disease,
whether epidemic or sporadic.
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