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is a lamentable circumstance. It is one that deserves a searching and
continuous enquiry. The causes assigned for the deaths of a large proportion
are defined in the mortality-returns. It is notorious that infants
are more prone than those of more advanced ages, to epidemic diseases.
But it is not true that this is so, as many people still believe, because
children "must go through" these disorders. No child is left the better
in constitution for having had Small-Pox, or Measles, or Scarlatina. On
the contrary, these diseases frequently leave behind them the seeds of
Scrofula, Consumption, and other diseases, which prove fatal at a later
period. Nor is there any greater necessity or reason why a child should
take the poison of Small-Pox or of Scarlatina, than for administering to
it a dose of arsenic or prussic acid. The explanation of the greater frequency
of zymotic diseases amongst infants, lies first, in the far greater
activity of their circulating system, inducing a greater readiness to absorb
poisonous matter contained in the air, or in food; and secondly, in the
fact that they are more closely and more continuously exposed to the ordi
nary sources of zymotic poisons, than are adults. I believe that the opinion
is spreading amongst the Medical Officers of Health, whose duties have
led them to investigate the causes of zymotic diseases more systematically,
and with more completeness of sources of information, than had before
been brought to bear upon this intricate question, that Measles, Scarlatina,
and Typhoid Fever, may frequently be traced to one common cause,
that cause being sewer-poison. It is not meant that these diseases are
convertible into each other. But numerous observations show that all
are apt to prevail simultaneously in the same localities, and that the
localities especially obnoxious to them all, arc those in which the dwellings
are exposed to the emanations from house-refuse, cesspools, obstructed
drains, and last, not least, from the influx of air drawn direct from the
sewers. The conviction of the truth of this proposition has been gradually
gaining strength in my mind. I urge it here because it adds another
argument to those already acknowledged in favor of active sanitary
administration, and because it points forcibly to a special sanitary improvement
to which I shall refer hereafter. It has often been said that
children are the most delicate and sensitive tests of miasm. Where
noxious gases and other injurious agencies exist, children suffer first and
most; but they do not suffer alone. It would be a libel upon the purest
feelings of human nature to seek to stimulate the apprehensions of a