members under what conditions the working-people live, when
one thinks how crowded their dwellings are, how every nook and corner
swarms with human beings, how sick and well sleep in the same room, in
the same bed, the only wonder is that a contagious disease like this
fever does not spread yet farther. And when one reflects how little
medical assistance the sick have at command, how many are without any
medical advice whatsoever, and ignorant of the most ordinary
precautionary measures, the mortality seems actually small. Dr. Alison,
who has made a careful study of this disease, attributes it directly to
the want and the wretched condition of the poor, as in the report already
quoted. He asserts that privations and the insufficient satisfaction of
vital needs are what prepare the frame for contagion and make the
epidemic widespread and terrible. He proves that a period of privation,
a commercial crisis or a bad harvest, has each time produced the typhus
epidemic in Ireland as in Scotland, and that the fury of the plague has
fallen almost exclusively on the working-class. It is a noteworthy fact,
that according to his testimony, the majority of persons who perish by
typhus are fathers of families, precisely the persons who can least be
spared by those dependent upon them; and several Irish physicians whom he
quotes bear the same testimony.

Another category of diseases arises directly from the food rather than
the dwellings of the workers. The food of the labourer, indigestible
enough in itself, is utterly unfit for young children, and he has neither
means nor time to get his children more suitable food. Moreover, the
custom of giving children spirits, and even opium, is very general; and
these two influences, with the rest of the conditions of life prejudicial
to bodily development, give rise to the most diverse affections of the
digestive organs, leaving life-long traces behind them. Nearly all
workers have stomachs more or less weak, and are yet forced to adhere to
the diet which is the root of the evil. How should they know what is to
blame for it? And if they knew, how could they obtain a more suitable
regimen so long as they cannot adopt a different way of living and are
not better educated? But new disease arises during childhood from
impaired digestion. Scrofula is almost universal among the
working-class, and scrofulous parents have scrofulous children,
especially when the original influences continu