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14 Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
when we think that after all which has been done in the way of sanitary improvement, a
disease like this, considered essentially preventable should still attack and destroy so many
of the people. The main reason for this is, I think, its contagious nature. It has a specific
cause similar to that of scarlatina, and analagous diseases, and is always present, in a
greater or less degree of activity. Numbers of cases which have occurred in this district
we have fairly traced to contagion. But we may know right well the cause of a disease,
yet be powerless to prevent the effect. A poor man comes seeking shelter in the Workhouse,
or in a Refuge; he enters ailing, not knowing what is the matter with him; or, if
indeed, there is anything the matter beyond wretchedness, want, and weariness; by the
time morning comes he is worse; the symptoms show the onset of a fever, he has slept
surrounded by others, and all in that state mentally and bodily, which renders them most
susceptible of imbibing poison; and so it spreads wherever taken, whether in Hospitals,
Workhouses, or Infirmaries. What can be done? The man must rest somewhere, and
where he is, there is danger. The marvel is, that when once fever has been brought into,
or has arisen in any of our destitute localities, that it does not spread more widely, and
exercise a deadlier influence. The materials for such a consequence are present; there is
want and overcrowding; and neglect of cleanliness, personal and domestic. A sanitary
writer has said, that the getting of fever into a town is like the getting of vermin into a
house, it is most difficult to be got out again. This subject must be examined in a wider
and more impartial spirit than we have hitherto done, otherwise we shall fall back with
baffled hopes, and cowed spirits, and be ready to ask " What good ?"
Typhus has been gradually increasing ever since 1860—1; the registration has run
thus, 25, 48, 88, and 113. Diarrhœa is a disease of temperature, and rises and falls with
the heat of the summer months. It has numbered 63 deaths.