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said to have well begun to live, it will belie its name,
and be comparatively worthless. Hygeia will then no
longer be regarded as the health-giving goddess, but
a myth, the creation of doctrinaires and idealists; or at
best as a being overweighted by the labours imposed by
ignorance and cupidity, and with energies paralysed
needing the ministrations of her father iEsculapius.
Spero meliora. We hope for better things, and
believe that Hygeia, as the faithful handmaid of
religion, will yet, with the help of the cognate sciences,
make this earth a bud of which Paradise will be the
blossom.
AVe know that 140 of these deaths were occasioned
by measles, scarlet fever, and whooping-cough. I have
already expressed the opinion, that these deaths were
preventible. Of how many more the same might be
said, I leave it to others to determine.
Nor let it be forgotten, that, while these figures
represent the deaths, they imperfectly indicate the
extent of the sickness which has at any time prevailed in
the parish, or the amount of suffering and disease which
preceded them, or the injuries—such as blindness,
deafness, lung mischief, &c.,—which these diseases left
behind them as perpetual reminders of their occurrence.
These figures are the indices of death alone. Death,
like birth, happening to every one but once, whether
as an instrument or a state, has an importance entirely
its own, refuses to be associated with other events,
admits of no rival near its throne, and, whenever it
asserts its prerogative, claims its right to speak for itself.