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94
polluted soil raised to a definite temperature, it is
easy to indicate routes which the products of
such growth find only too often open to them.
Badly constructed drains laid in at a slight depth
under or near houses built on "made up" soil,
without an impervious layer of concrete over the
site; waste-pipes connected to drains with no traps
to keep the up-draught out of the houses; soil-pipes
with defective joints, placed near to the windows of
the larder or living room, perhaps inside the house
and without any ventilation, and so on ad nauseam.
The products of micro-organic life may be called
the exciting cause of the disease to which there
must be added one or more predisposing. These
will be found in such insanitary conditions as
narrow streets and courts, absence of direct sunshine
to the tenements, deficiency in air currents round
the houses, and in dirty and overcrowded rooms.
To these there must be added yet another cause, due
to weakly health inherited through the parents
living in insanitary homes or to inherited disease
or diathesis. So that it appears that all those
conditions included in the term "bad hygienic
surroundings" will act directly on the infant himself
and indirectly by inheritance through the
parent.
The effects of high temperatures as regards
diarrhoea have been referred to in the preceding
paragraph, and it now remains to see how far the