"sickness" being "always there," a justification of its being "there" at
all?

[Sidenote: How does He carry out His laws?]

[Sidenote: How does He teach His laws?]

I will tell you what was the cause of this hospital pyaemia being in that
large private house. It was that the sewer air from an ill-placed sink
was carefully conducted into all the rooms by sedulously opening all the
doors, and closing all the passage windows. It was that the slops were
emptied into the foot pans;--it was that the utensils were never
properly rinsed;--it was that the chamber crockery was rinsed with
dirty water;--it was that the beds were never properly shaken, aired,
picked to pieces, or changed. It was that the carpets and curtains were
always musty;--it was that the furniture was always dusty; it was that
the papered walls were saturated with dirt;--it was that the floors were
never cleaned;--it was that the uninhabited rooms were never sunned, or
cleaned, or aired;--it was that the cupboards were always reservoirs of
foul air;--it was that the windows were always tight shut up at
night;--it was that no window was ever systematically opened, even in
the day, or that the right window was not opened. A person gasping for
air might open a window for himself. But the servants were not taught to
open the windows, to shut the doors; or they opened the windows upon a
dank well between high walls, not upon the airier court; or they opened
the room doors into the unaired halls and passages, by way of airing the
rooms. Now all this is not fancy, but fact. In that handsome house I
have known in one summer three cases of hospital pyaemia, one of
phlebitis, two of consumptive cough: all the _immediate_ products of
foul air. When, in temperate climates, a house is more unhealthy in
summer than in winter, it is a certain sign of something wrong. Yet
nobody learns the lesson. Yes, God always justifies His ways. He is
teaching while you are not learning. This poor body loses his finger,
that one loses his life. And all from the most easily preventible
causes.[9]

[Sidenote: Physical degeneration in families. Its causes.]

The houses of the grandmothers and great grandmothers of this
generation, at least the country houses, with front door and back door
always standing open, winter and summer, and a thorough draught always
blowing through--with all the scrubbing, and cleaning, and polishing,
and scouring which used to go on, the grandmothers, and sti