death-rate for the whole population is nearly forty in a thousand.
But is there no help for this state of things? The foregoing account
of the principal causes of disease suggests naturally the means of at
least partial cure for the accumulated evils under which the benighted
city is suffering. It is true that the climate must always be
unfavorable to persons of a certain constitution, but its bracing air
is a tonic to those who are able to bear it, and its fierce winds
serve to sweep away many an impurity. It is true, also, that the soil
must always be in some degree a manufactory of injurious effluvia, and
that the vicinity of that long strip of marshy bottom known as the
English Garden must continue to be a source of mischief; but if the
dead had never been buried in the neighborhood of the town, and if the
excreta of the living had not from the beginning until how been
allowed to corrupt the air and the water, the occasional prevalence of
vegetable miasma would give comparatively little trouble. In fact, the
extreme backwardness of the people with regard to knowledge of, and
obedience to, the simplest sanitary laws is a great aggravation of
both their necessary and unnecessary ills. During the recent cholera
epidemic the physicians complained that all rational means of abating
the plague were continually thwarted by the ignorance and obstinacy of
the lower classes. Very few families kept remedies in their houses,
and yet in many cases medical aid was not applied for, lest the
regulations concerning the disinfection of furniture and the burning
of bedding, and other clothing should be enforced. There was the
greatest dissatisfaction with the prohibition against the holding of
public balls and other amusements wherein health would be particularly
exposed; and the foolish citizens crowded all the more into the
unventilated, tobacco-poisoned beer-cellars and concert-halls, and
persisted in supping on heavy food and cold beer in the open air, as
though on purpose to spite the over-anxious magistrates and doctors.
Nor was the stupidity confined entirely to the lower classes. People
who ought to have known better defied the cholera in excess of
rioting, while those of another turn of mind gave way to superstitious
fears, and as soon as they felt the first symptoms of the disease fled
to the cold, damp churches and wasted in prayer upon their knees the
few precious hours which, spent in a warm bed and under the influence
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