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disease. People are still, indeed, to be found who tell
us that epidemics are indiscriminate in their attacks,
and that they can point to instances in support of their
assertion; but it is sufficient to refer to the long and
unvarying record of medical experience in refutation of
this. The well-to-do will, in all probabity, suffer when
a district is ravaged by any malady, but the greatest
sufferers are found among those who are least kindly
treated by fortune, or who are most negligent of their
moral and social duties. There is just sufficient catholicity
in an epidemic to show us that there is a
brotherhood in suffering; that, in fact, if the wealthy
man wraps himself up in his selfishness and declares
that he is not his "brother's keeper," he, too often, is
called on by death to pay for his neglect and indifference.
But it is nevertheless true, that the heaviest blow
of an epidemic falls on those who are least prepared to
meet it, and who, unfortunately, are least able to escape
its clutches. The present extraordinary high price of
meat, has a direct tendency to expose the labouring
classes to disease. With a liberal diet one may, to a
certain degree, assume an air of defiant confidence in
the presence of infection which would not be reasonable
if the system were impoverished by the exhaustion
attending a continued short supply of nutritious food.
There does not appear any immediate cause for
apprehending the invasion of our land by Asiatic
Cholera; although, at the same time, it must be recollected
that, on former occasions, having its origin in the
East it travelled by "fitful steps and slow" Westward
until it reached Europe; that the scourge has at the
present moment completed a portion of a similar course,
and that no preventive quarantine laws or cordons sanitaires