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which get into the same receptacle. It is not difficult
to imagine the state of the atmosphere of a room under
such circumstances: at times it is almost pestilential.
The general state of the closcts of houses let out to
several families, is one of the greatest difficulties in our
sanitary endeavours, and I must say that, in this instance,
the fault is more with the tenants than with the
landlords. The new law 011 the Public Health gives
power to oblige landlords to have closets and water
supply proportionate to the number of people in a
house, but if there were half-a-dozen closets in a house,
this indolent habit, to use the mildest invective, would
still have to be overcome. Let us hope that the gradual,
although very slow influence of advice and common
sense, together with better education, will rectify this
as well as much other ignorance that prevails on the
important subject of Health.
That a very low condition of health results from
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overcrowding, the pollution of water, too much indulgence
in fermented drinks, &c., is unquestionable, but
great poverty is also a cause of bad health, and should
not be overlooked. Large classes of our population,
and specially the innumerable women who are left with
children to provide for, arc, in too many instances,
desperately poor, and struggle with many difficulties
to the very verge of starvation rather than enter
the Workhouse. From these circumstances, too little
food, and that little too often bad and unwholesome,
the healing powers of the constitution are so low
as to render very large numbers of our people, more
especially children, open to the death inflicting powers
of the first epidemic that may assail them, be it
typhus fever, cholera, or other infection. Whether
anything can be done sufficiently to elevate the
mental powers of so dense a population as that of
England, is a question I shall not presume to answer.
Unless we can improve their physical condition, we