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stronger beneficial force at our command, a power of raising
tlie state of health of that portion of the public, which,
habitually reckless, neither knows how nor cares for protecting
itself from liability to disease. That power is the
authority conferred on the Local Board, to remedy sanitary
defects in habitations.
The true treatment of epidemic and endemic disease is by
thorough sanitary improvement. Medical science is but
feeble to cure such disease, though powerful to prevent. If
it cannot by the administration of medicaments put an end
to diseases like Typhus Fever, it can render the place of
their existence less conformable to their encouragement and
development,—it can remove causes which nourish and
propagate the scourge,—and if it be impossible absolutely
to extinguish it, its mode of existence may be reduced from
one eminently destructive of human life, to that of an
ordinary transient ailment. In what state would the
inmates of our large public establishments be in the absence
of the most careful and severe sanitary regulation? Regret
has not been unfrequent for the consequences of either
mismanagement or neglect of the prime and essential conditions
for preserving a congregated body of individuals in
fair and proper health. If careful vigilance be found so
useful in large establishments, and the consequences of
neglect so quickly evident and disastrous as we know them
to be, it is clear that, to descend from the greater to the less,
similar pare in house improvement would be followed by
the desired permanent reduction of the rate of mortality.
We should interrupt the current existence of formidable and
to a certain extent intractable diseases, and raise the state
of general and habitual health to such a moderate standard
of vigour, that it could oppose successfully the morbid