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farm-house is often close to the farm-yard on a low part of the farm,
and is surrounded by buildings, ricks, and trees in the yard, or near it,
the refuse of the house and all the animals is kept month after month,
undergoing fermentations and giving off noxious vapours; and it
happens, that if the air is stagnant for some days— if the temperature is
high— if some sick person or diseased animal enters the place, which
is surrounded by salubrious fields— the farm becomes a scene of
suffering; the cattle perish by pleuropneumonias, the children are
attacked by scarlatinas, the wife has low fever, or the farmer himself
dies, and his name, at a premature age, is enrolled in the registers of
death." Such, is the deliberate opinion of the highest authority in vital
statistics in Europe— such is his description of the neglect of sanitary
precautions— a description which corresponds most closely with the
course pursued by the small pox, in its late outbreak in this district, of
which 1 propose laying a brief description before you.
The first case of small pox which I am aware of, occurred in
Lawrence's Buildings, Newington Common, and was imported by some
Irish vagrants. In this locality, which on my visit, presented a mass of
filth rarely met with, the road being many inches deep in decaying vegetable
refuse, worked up with the detritus of the road, into a thick paste
the pathways almost on a level with the road, and in a similar condition,
from the absence of channels to carry off the surface drainage the yards
behind the houses, which are extremely small, contained overflowing
cesspools and enormous accumulations of dust and decaying vegetable
matter, and the houses themselves were filthy in the extreme, and very
dilapidated. The smell was abominable; and in the room containing
the infected children, in which the whole family lived, there was no
furniture but two rickettv chairs and an old table, the only bed being a
heap of dirty shavings, and their sole covering a filthy rug. As might
have been expected, the small pox poison fell like a spark in the midst of
gunpowder, and in spite of precautionary measures, lit up the disease in
the surrounding district. It is also most important to state, that the
disease prevailed almost exclusively in those localities near which there
existed open drains, or ditches fouled by house refuse, cow-yards, piggeries,
or heaps of decaying manure; and also that here it assumed its most severe
form, and caused its chief mortality.
It must not be supposed from these remarks, that I consider if we
had no nuisances of this kind, we should never have zymotic* diseases
assume an epidemic form, or that we should remove small pox, measles,
scarlet fever, or ordinary fever from our country, but merely that their
presence increases the intensity of the poison.
The chief peculiarities of all these diseases, consist in the immunity
ordinarily afforded by one attack against another, and in their spread
from individual to individual; if, therefore, any one of these diseases
breaks out in a neighbourhood, it is likely to attack all those exposed to
its emanations who are susceptible to its action but its intensity is
much modified by the presence or absence of decomposing animal and
vegetable matter. When it has spent its fury in one locality, it
The word "zymotic " is derived from the Greek, and signifies fermentation
as these diseases are considered to spread and produce their peculiar effects on
the system by an action in the blood resembling fermentation or catalysis.