In directing attention to this subject, I would not be understood as undervaluing the change involved in the opening of Indian appointments to examination. It is one of the most important changes in our times. It makes the public service in India the property of the ablest and best of the educated classes in the empire, instead of being the exclusive privilege of the nominees of the holders of stock in a public company. It makes it possible to abolish that company, and so to put an end to the disgrace of making the government of millions of our fellow-men a matter of trade, instead of a high office and an exalted duty.

The reason assigned for the last renewal of the East India Company's charter was, that the patronage, if transferred to the ministers of the crown, would be a dangerous instrument of corruption. The examination has removed that difficulty.

But why should this principle be applied to the distant appointments in India, and not to the more important appointments in the civil service at home? Why should our most gifted men be tempted to sacrifice their lives to the Indian climate, and to devote their energies to the acquisition of Indian fortunes? Are there not questions and duties at home, and in the more healthy colonies, the future dwelling-place of our race, requiring the greatest talent and the highest character which we can command?

The statistics with respect to the relative mortality of the British race in different parts of the world, suggest some considerations of much greater importance than those which I have ventured to point out, but which it would be out of place to do more than notice in this paper.

It is singular that the division of free and slave states in America should correspond with a marked difference in mortality to the whites. May not this be an indication that the whites have transgressed the natural limits of colonization, and that their presence in the slave states is unnatural? And may not the negro empire in St. Domingo indicate the future not only of the southern states of the Union, but also of Cuba and of the West Indies?

It is also remarkable that the ground which the Cape Colonists have endeavoured to take from the Kaffirs lies beyond the limits of European mortality in Africa. May the colonists not be thus encroaching on the territory best suited to the aborigines?

There is one point in the tables of relative mortality which remains to be noticed. It is the great diminution in risk incurred where persons only visit at suitable seasons, but do not reside in the unhealthy regions. This, when taken in conjunction with the diminution of sea-risk consequent on the extension of the use of steam, would seem to indicate that the future of the British race is to dwell in the temperate regions, but to trade with all parts of the world.

120

V.-On the Connexion between the Origin and Localization of Diseases, whether usual or epidemical, and the Over-crowding of Buildings in our Cities.-By Richard Dowden (Richard), Esq.

66

[Read 21st May, 1855.]

In the statistics of diseases it has been for a long time recorded that maladies which are at one period scattered and occasional, at other times appear in accumulative form, and are epidemical, or inflicted upon the general people." These two phases of sickness seem to have their origin in obscure and perhaps elementary causes, but the mitigation or aggravation of these unfavourable states of health seems to be very much within the influences of our own neglect on the one hand, and our own zeal, courage, and industry on the other. Medical professional literature distinguishes very clearly the sporadic or occasional occurrences of diseases from their more universal or epidemic accesses among us; and although these attacks have their individual states, and retain them in some seasons, yet at other times the minor visitations quickly pass into the more general outbreaks which are known as plagues or pestilences. Through these stages of aggravation some of our most familiar diseases are known to pass. Typhus fever, at times limited to occasional cases, is, as we all know, constantly assuming for awhile the epidemic aggravation; and at more distant cycles we have diseases which are usually sporadic taking on them the epidemical continuance and universality. It is scarcely necessary to mention the series of diseases respecting which this is most remarkable, but the best remembered are perhaps influenza, hooping-cough, and small-pox. Various animal families as well as mankind have been found subject to these two classes of maladies; living vegetables, too, and even dead organic substances, have their laws of destruction-the normal or usual, and the abnormal or epidemical. The dry-rot in timber, which occurred with great malignity in Cork some years ago, illustrates my last statement. This peculiar fungus extended its destructive vegetation for a period of two or three years with a force and universality which defied the class of precautions which are usually sufficient to prevent its ravages. Old dry timber became susceptible and was perished. Contact or contagion did not seem necessary to the distribution of the mischief; but the leprosy of timber, like that mentioned in the Levitical law, was so penetrative and universal, that nothing short of pulling away all enclosed structures seemed to have power to stop the destroyer. This pulling down, however, discovered a fact, that in the acme of this fungoid epidemic of the timber, plenty of dry air, with an active circulation well maintained, was a specific against the disease. The history of the unusual destruction of timber-work during the time referred to would, if examined, demonstrate the fact, that there then was a state of the atmosphere inducing an excessive energy of vegetative powers in the fungus of dry-rot, which is more easily comprehended than that dry dead timber should have acquired a

new and morbid susceptibility to the growth which so suddenly seized on its structure. This excessive tendency in timber to become pabulum for that vegetable, is not now among us as a costly infliction; but what has once occurred may happen again, and light and air as preservative means in houses can only be fully maintained by street-roominess. We find, then, that dead and dry timber has had its epidemical disease; probably the wood was but a passive sufferer, and the mischief may in this case have belonged to the undue activity of its vegetable assailant. But when we come to treat of living organized beings, we have to deal with creatures having a highly impressionable susceptibility of their own, prepared perhaps by exciting causes to receive the more active malarious influences which co-exist abroad and around. Climate, food, atmospheric poisons, and many other agencies have their action on all living organisms. Fruit trees are sometimes affected; so are timber trees. The grape vine now has some epidemic in the wine countries which brings diseases on the wood, the leaves, the fruit. The potato disease and its melancholy history have afforded a controverted page in the black book of vegetable epidemics. We cannot venture into the discussion here, but potatoes we know are less susceptible of disease than they were seven years ago. Onions had 66 a rot" not long ago; and, indeed, experience tells us that epidemics to plants, animals, and mankind are to be expected occasionally, and that it is our duty to take the best precautions we can against their aggravation, by inducing firm health and resistant energy wherever we know how to produce such a preservative power. The most alarming of our epidemics among mankind is the cholera. There can be little doubt that some unsanatory condition of the atmosphere is promotive of this disease; for during its access most people feel some occasional disturbance of the intestinal functions, while with very many that fearful bowel-fever known as cholera becomes an acute, and often a morbid disease. For a time facts were not carefully observed, and people thought this disease to be as occult in its progress as it still seems to be in its initiative causes; but men have recovered their courage, and, with it, both observation and skill in deduction. We now know that whatever are the conditions which induce choleratic symptoms, any circumstances which prostrate the general health make the prostrated more susceptible to the attacks of cholera. A truly tonic power in mind and in body is then the best, if not an infallible, specific in epidemical times; and if this observation is based upon a sufficient foundation of observed facts, it becomes important to examine if there are not in existence far too many widely-acting public causes of depressed health, which induce a dangerous want of tone, and consequently expose multitudes of people to the debility which gives to disease its melancholy victories over human life. It is well known from experience that immoralities of all kinds are at war with man's healthy power. Drunkenness and all kinds of degradations bring with them this natural vengeance on the physical machinery. Nor does vice stop there, for the moral powers also become involved, and the mind of the vicious man aids in subjugating his dilapidated

resistancy. This is, however, what may be called the individual treason against our stronghold of health. We cannot dwell on it as it would be needful to do, but must pass on to the public and communal offences against the general stock of healthiness which we ought to have in store against any unexpected or even well-anticipated epidemical assaults upon our vital powers.

FRESH AIR AND FULL SUNLIGHT.

Ever since the fearful tragedy of the stifling in the black-hole at Calcutta, it has been an admitted fact that the effluvium exhaled from closely confined living animals is intensely malarious, and persons writing on the health-promoting conditions of society have usually demanded a free ventilation as very important. But these renovators have generally dealt with but one source of the evils of which they complained, namely, bad air within dwellings. The matter, however, requires a more extended examination, and those frequently confined places, from which buildings receive air, but not fresh air, demand sanatorial scrutiny. How often we find in towns structures intended to contain several residents placed where free aeration is impossible. Old prisons are usually situated in narrow streets, where the deep shade of high walls shuts out the sun-light, that most active means for circulating the air; their gratings let in a polluted atmosphere to have its malarious taint aggravated within, and then returned upon the narrow neighbourhood poisoned and poisoning all within its evil influence. Parish almshouses are often thus built in pestilential places; and though the languid life of old age find this but a slow poison, we know that young children, when sent at times into these dens, experience a frightful amount and rapidity of mortality. Long established hospitals, too, are frequently discovered in similar obscurity, hidden from the natural use of a disinfecting, and even actively healing sunlight, with free and pure air; even workhouses have been so unhappily located as to be much debarred from the advantages of those great elementary pabula which tend to sustain the health and promote power with a natural active energy. We are, then, unmistakably invited too often to trace to an outward cause the inward maladies in buildings, where people are grouped together in any number; nor are houses where single families reside indulged in any immunity for doing without the natural elements of healthiness; they, too, when living in narrow, dark, and damp streets, suffer from debility, the consequence of being hourly and daily unconsciously, but certainly dosed with slow poison. Look into our narrow streets; they are often pebble-paved; they are too much shaded from sunlight, and barred in from a fully circulating air to be dry or warm; "every pebble has its puddle;" and then a bad, untrapped sewerage, with a direfully cadaverous or death-dealing channelage, (a system of overground sewers,) makes the narrow ways filthy and fœtid, in spite of brooms, for nothing but force-pump flushing can clean these places even in a temporary way, and then at the expense of a perpetual wetness. These circumstances describe some of the evils consequent on houses and walls being drawn into a too close contiguity in

towns; and whether the floating funguses, which close dampness developes, pervade organic tissues or not, we know that dampness is unwholesome; that a fusty foulness in the air is nauseous, and that mildew in clothing, both linen and woollen, is mischievous; while mould destroys furniture, pictures, books, and all that makes the tasteful and useful decoration of modern domestic life.

METHOD OF A REMEDY.

Having thus expatiated on the evils produced by the narrowness of streets and ways, I proceed to state some of the particular measures which a general, though perhaps very gradual, reform will require. And first, what breadth should be considered as essential for allowing access of sufficient sunlight, ameliorating sun-warmth, and an unobstructed circulation of air in streets? I shall quote a general if not a universal rule of practice from Mr. Loudon, the eminent botanical writer. Among his voluminous labours, one of his Encyclopædias is architectural, and in that work he treats on this subject. It is curious that Mr. Paxton, also a gardener, should have been the best practical contriver of structure where the sun and its influence were glorious means of beauty and brightness; the coincident tendency seems to have arisen from the fact that both of these physiologists, having attended closely to the means of health, vigour, and beauty in plants, readily transferred their experience to the production of similar results by their adaptations of light and air in a more general application. Loudon's law was this, that no building should be encroached on by any other building placed nearer to it than its own height of distance; that is to say, if the houses at one side of a street were sixty feet high, the range of houses on the opposite side of the street should be sixty feet distant. It is true, many handsome streets have a breadth beyond this, but as working every-day ways, this rule would secure to streets light, dryness, and change of air. It would, of course, be a great assistant advantage if all the corners of streets were well rounded off, instead of touching other streets at a sharp angle; the air would move more freely round the non-angular turn, the approach would show the opening street at some little distance by the light round the corners, would give size to the juncture of the streets, and would prevent vehicles from any danger of running against each other. But to return to our chief topic, light and air. Loudon carries his suggestion into flower culture and into foresting; he says the health of flowers requires that the free earth should be seen between them, not only because their proper nutriment requires some individual space, but also because their energy is prostrated by crowding. Again he says, "their form is lost if they have not a power of being seen; it is only by a clear area of their own height that plants can be seen—

'Gaily to bourgeon and boldly to grow.'

And it should be remembered that the sunny side of flowers is always the most beautiful. Now, when they are over-crowded, they cannot have any sunny side, and consequently their brightest