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29
The deaths under the head of phthisis and allied disease
are due to a peculiar unhealthy form of constitution, in which
there is a tendency to the deposition in various organs of a substance,
which rapidly breaks down and ulcerates, and thus
destroys the healthy tissues of the body, and ultimately causes
death. Many of those who are the subjects of this affection
inherit the tendency to it from their parents, and not unfrequently from their parent's vices,—"the sins of the fathers are
visited on the children." But many, especially among the poor,
acquire it, not only as the penalty of a dissipated course of life,
but by long continued inadequate diet, over-work, exposure to
the weather, and unwholesome habitations. Phthisis is a disease
which will probably always prevail; but it is one which may
frequently be prevented, or delayed, or ameliorated. by guarding
against those habits of life, and obviating those defects of constitution,
on which its development in great measure depends.
Scarlet fever, measles, and hooping cough, have always been
present among us, and will possibly never vanish. They are
diseases, too, of so uncertain a character that sometimes, even
under the most favourable circumstances, they assume a malignant
and rapidly fatal form. But many of the deaths which
result from them are undoubtedly preventable, being caused
less by the inherent intensity of the diseases, than by complications,
such as dropsy and inflammation of the lungs, which arise
during their progress, and which are commonly produced by all
those adverse hygenic conditions, which again are present most
abundantly in the dwellings of the poor. Similar observations
may be made, in reference to the deaths collected under the head
of diarrhoea, bronchitis, and pneumonia of children under three
years of age, and to those assigned to hydrocephalus and convulsions,