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from the fact that only 4 deaths from this disease have
been registered during the last quarter, while there
were 11 such deaths from fever in the corresponding
quarter of 1856, that the disease, if as prevalent, is
not so fatal as in former years. There is no doubt
that more cases of fever have lately occurred than for
several years, and the fever has been of a low type,
and although frequently classed under the name of
gastric or intestinal fever, has in reality been typhoid.
The propagation of this variety of fever has been
especially traced to sewer emanations. Typhus fever
is contagious as well as epidemic. typhoid is eminently
distinguished as having its source in stagnant
waters, cesspools, and bad drains. Many cases have
been traced to the evacuations of the sick, which carry
with them the germs of the disease into drains and
sewers; and when many members of a family have
been successively attacked, no doubt is entertained by
the best authorities that it is by the absorption of some
poison floating in the atmosphere, and rising up from
ditches, drains, &c. A most lamentable instance of
this fatal disease, which has penetrated with grief every
household in the country, naturally draws attention to
this subject, and should urge us all to do everything
in our power to render emanations from drains and
sewers into our houses next to impossible. Wherever
decaying brick drains exist they should be replaced by
impermeable pipes. The majority of old brick drains
are no better than lengthened cesspools, they are, too,
often carelessly covered with old tiles, slates, and
even wood; rats make numerous holes, aud emanations,
putrescent and often infectious, result.
There are numbers of houses in our Parish where
brick drains still exist, and these, I may say, are mostly
not in a condition to prevent the escape of putrescent
am infectious emanations. It would be good economy
in the occupiers ot all houses having such drainage to