l 3 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A case, which, some time ago, was tried in the Court of Queen's 

 Bench, illustrates, in a striking manner, some of the dangers that be- 

 long to the annual national migration to the sea-side, and also suggests 

 some very large and important considerations affecting the national 

 health. Without going fully into the details of a peculiarly painful 

 case, it will be sufficient to mention the salient facts. Sea-air having 

 been ordered for a child by a medical man after an attack of scarlatina, 

 a lady took her nurse, governess, and children, to the coast, and hired 

 apartments 'without telling the lodging-house keeper of the nature of 

 the illness in her family. After a time this most infectious of all in- 

 fectious diseases broke out afresh, apparently from the neglect of the 

 proper disinfecting processes, and the poor lady lost two of her chil- 

 dren, and the unhappy landlady of the lodging-house also lost two 

 little ones. The anguish of parental grief cannot be measured by a 

 pecuniary standard, but actual medical and funeral expenses, and the 

 injury done to the course of business, are susceptible of being assessed, 

 and the jury gave the lodging-house keeper substantial damages. It 

 is impossible not to feel commiseration for the sea-side visitors who ex- 

 perienced this blow in addition to their own calamities, but the verdict 

 was not iinwarranted by the facts, nor, to use regretfully a harsh word, 

 undeserved. Those who are acquainted with the history of special 

 classes among the poor are aware how much deadly illness there has 

 been at times in the families of laundresses and pawnbrokers, who have 

 had under their charge the raiment of fever-patients, to which no puri- 

 fying process had been applied. (Still greater mischief has been done 

 by milk which has been adulterated with water taken from some im- 

 pure source.) We know, also, of cases where lodgings or furnished 

 houses have been let, in the holiday season of the year, after the occur- 

 rence of contagious illness, and yet no disinfectants have been used, 

 and no honest warning has been given. It must increasingly be felt 

 how necessary are some caution and judgment in making holiday ar- 

 rangements. It is comparatively easy for a lodging-house keeper to 

 recover damages from a well-to-do family in a case where fever has 

 been propagated through a want of care and candor; but, if the con- 

 verse case had occurred and it happens in at least an equal degree 

 it is hardly likely that substantial damages could be obtained from the 

 landlord, even if bereaved fathers, in their grief, should be inclined to 

 seek them. Scarlet fever slays in this country annually some twenty 

 thousand people, and disables, more or less, for a longer or shorter 

 time, a hundred thousand more. Yet, humanly speaking, the larger 

 amount of this mortality might be averted by the processes of disin- 

 fection, separation, and, we may add, a religious adherence to truth. 



It is not pleasant to think of the successive steps in the history of 

 the sad case to which we have alluded, yet they illustrate the dangers 

 of the travelling public, and might explain the apparently mysterious 

 origin of many a similar attack. The mischief arose with a conva- 



