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this country and on the Continent of Europe for the
last two or three years. It visits the rich equally
with the poor, and no class of the community is
exempt from its attacks. The poisons which generate
it steal from the imperfect drain or neighbouring
cesspool, and finds access into the second floor
sleeping rooms of the rich, as into the cellars and
attics of the poor. It counts up its victims amongst
the noble and the powerful of the land, and Portugal
has to lament the death of two of its sovereigns,
Italy, that of its most distinguished statesman, and
England, the wise and good husband of her sovereign,
as victims of this cruel disease. Yet these
terrible losses point but in one direction as to their
source, and that is ignorance and neglect. Where
privies and cesspools are left unemptied, where water
closets are without water, where drains are imperfect,
where sewers are unswept, where slaughter
houses and cow houses are allowed to accumulate
their filth, where dust-bins reek with unconsumed
animal and vegetable matter, and dust carts are
allowed to throw out their foul effluvia in our streets
in midday, there this disease must exist and carry
off its victims. Of the cases enumerated under
the head of typhus in the above Tables, the majority
have been cases of typhoid fever. In some instances
the causes of this disease have been traced to defects
of drainage or some impurity in the house where it
has occurred, but in a large number of cases the
disease seems to have been contracted at a distance