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4
The questions that will naturally be asked on the subject will
be—What is the reason that, during this scourge of Cholera, all
parts of your District were not visited alike? and, why did it extend
its ravages to some localities more than to others?
The answers to these questions have been a source of care and
anxiety and deep investigation to me, and I have come to the
conclusion that the following facts will form the only reply which
may be relied on.
Certain districts were low and ill-drained, the houses and streets
badly ventilated, the inhabitants thickly crowded together, indulging
in dirty habits, without proper clothing, and without the common
necessaries of life. Can it be wondered at that such localities should
have been more than usually afflicted with sickness, or that deaths
should have occurred in a proportion much greater than in the
more open parts of the neighbourhood?
If we compare the District of Blackheath with the Parish of
St. Nicholas, Deptford, some parts of the Parish of St. Paul, or
the lower parts of Greenwich on the Banks of the River, we shall
find that the one was free from any marked pestilence, whilst
the population of the others was as constantly decimated by its
influence.
These observations do not only apply to Cholera, they are
equally potent as regards other epidemics and diseases generally;
whether it be Typhus Fever, Small Pox, Influenza, Scarlet Fever,
or any other malady. These localities are (and will be as long as they
are allowed to remain in their present condition) the focus from
which will spread an infection hostile to health, and bringing direful
calamities on the human race.
It is true that some of us, who are more happily circumstanced
in life, living in high, open situations, and possessing those comforts
and luxuries which are necessary and conducive to the development
of health, are sometimes afflicted with Fevers and other epidemics;
but mark the difference in the violence of such attacks, and, how
do we know that even these diseases are not brought upon us from
the above mentioned localities, where filth and infection abound?