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36
We are reminded of the conditions in the wellbalanced
sentence of Herodotus—In peace, children
bury their parents; in war, parents bury their children.
The result is the same, the cause is different—not redhanded
Mars, but hydra-headed disease.*
Here, then, is the field for sanitary effort. This is
our most urgent sanitary want. Here the energies
of the sanitary reformer, wisely directed, will secure
their largest results, and his labours meet with their
amplest reward. The appeal to him. "uttered or
unexpressed," for the preservation of their lives, is from
the most helpless, the most numerous, and the most
interesting portion of the race, the delicice humani
generis.
Great as is the interest attaching to such questions
as the ventilation of sewers, the utilization of sewage,
the improvement of the dwellings of the working
classes, and other matters which are engaging the
attention of sanitarians, such questions are subsidiary
and of secondary importance to the inquiry how best
to diminish the mortality of our infantile and juvenile
population.
Dealing with the exanthemata alone (measles,
scarlet fever, and small-pox), the answer from Medical
Officers of Health,—and it is within their purview that
the ravages of these diseases most frequently come,—
will, I venture to say, be formulated in the demand for
*Of 1,000,000 children born in England, 263,182 die under five years
of age; in the Healthy Districts 175,410; and in the Liverpool District,
which represents the most unfavourable sanitary conditions, 460,370, or
nearly one-half before they attain five years of age.