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ance accounted for. In this District I trust I may say that it has
been our constant endeavour to remove all that would probably
injure health, and to adopt measures calculated to improve it.
The prevalence of infectious fevers is an evil which will not be
entirely obviated until the sanitary arrangements of the kingdom
are governed by the requirements of scientific knowledge, instead
of, as at present, by those of official convenience. The Times, in
an article published some time ago, says, 1' The radical reform
which would be implied in so complete an abandonment of the
principles of action which now prevail, is one that could be only
brought about by a very general diffusion of enlightenment with
regard to the chief causes of the extension of such diseases, and
with regard to the extravagant cost and the widespread misery
which they occasion. But, in the meanwhile, it is possible that
some good may be done, and that some valuable lives may be saved,
by every endeavour to promote this diffusion of enlightenment,
and to reduce to form and order the somewhat chaotic notions
which are commonly entertained upon the subject."
Those who mix much in the world are constantly in the way of
hearing infectious fevers attributed to causes which are wholly
inadequate to produce them; and all errors of this sort are doubly
inischievous,—first, because they lead persons to expect safety
when it is not to be obtained ; secondly, because they lead to the disregard
of dangers which should be avoided, and to the neglect of
precautions which should be observed. The diseases which, in
this country, are often included under* the general term " fever,"
are three in number, entirely distinct from one another. " Typhus
Fever" is a malady which is fatal in a large percentage of cases,
and is liable to spring up whenever human beings are crowded
together in circumstances of misery and destitution. It is directly,
and in a high degree, infectious, by the exhalation thrown off by
the skin and by the brcatli of the patients. Its contagious character
is greatly intensified by the aggregation of the sick; and if it
breaks out in a crowded, but isolated dwelling, the probability is
that all the inhabitants will suffer, but that the fever will spread
no further, unless carried to other houses by visitors to the sick,
who may either contract the disease themselves, and so become
fresh sources of infection at their own homes, or may possibly
convey infection in their clothing. The forms of Cleanliness which
are effectual in limiting the spread of Typhus are—first, an