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9
The years when small-pox was epidemic in London were 18.38, 1844,
1848, 1852, 1855, 1859, 1863, 1867, and 1871.
The present epidemic commenced in London about the same period of
the year as that in 1870, viz., in September.
The question why zymotic diseases are at times epidemic is not easily
answered. The period of their return is uncertain, and, consequently, very
little attention in the way of prevention is given by the public to the subject
after the epidemic has passed away. As the people, however, become more
enlightened in the science of preventive medicine, more attention will be
paid to the causes and to the prevention of disease. Formerly the Government
was greatly in advance of the public in the knowledge and in the
practice of public hygiene; but now the public are probably in advance of
the Government, for the latter are becoming more slow to act, while the
former are becoming more pressing for improved sanitary laws.
Although the period of the return of epidemic diseases is uncertain,
they nevertheless demand special attention; and it behoves all sanitary
authorities to make suitable provision for the reception of the sick in any
case of emergency. For this purpose every local authority should obtain
permanent possession of a suitable site on which an iron building,
when required, might be speedily erected. "When this building was not
required for patients it might be taken down, and the ground kept as an
open space and used for recreation or for other purposes.
In any amended sanitary act provision should be made enabling Local
Boards to obtain land compulsorily for any purpose connected with the health
of the District.
Zymotic diseases, as is remarked by the Registrar-General in his Annual
Summary of the causes of death in London, in 1871, "give rise to all the
epidemics, and they may be popularly explained on the assumption that their
phenomena are the effect of changes in man and in the higher animals,
wrought by the invasion of self-multiplying molecules of the lowest, simplest
forms of life, having thus in common with the highest forms, that they
succeed each other in generations, with the marvellous variations of numbers
so commonly observed in vegetable blights, fungi, flies, locusts, and parasites.
The precautions commonly adopted have had in view the isolation of the
sick, which, in cases of leprosy, hydrophobia, and syphilis, where the zymotic
matter is fixed in a solid or fluid, proves effectual at least in restraining the
disease within narrower limits than it would otherwise attain."
In connexion with the above paragraph from the Registrar-General's
Report, the following remarks by Prefessor J. Bischof, which appeared in
the Times of January 30th, 1877, may be read with advantage: "According
to the most recent researches, certain microscopic organized or living bodies
constitute, in all probability, the specific poison or contagion which causes
the spreading of epidemics. Whenever there is a fresh outbreak of an
epidemic in a locality, the first cause is sure to be in connexion with a like