APPLIED SANITARY SCIENCE. 66 9 



munity would be in no danger; all the while carefully stamping out 

 with disinfectants the means or the germs by which disease and 

 death are carried from house to house. 



It should for these reasons be a maxim with the law-making power 

 to protect the health and lives of the people, whenever individual effort 

 is powerless or insufficient ; and, moreover, to provide that pure air, 

 wholesome drink and food, should be made possible to every inhabitant 

 of a town or city. If the refuse matter and excreta of a city are not 

 promptly and carefully removed ; if the streets are not of the proper 

 width, and regularly cleansed ; if houses are allowed to be so con- 

 structed that effective ventilation is impossible ; if the water-supply is 

 insufficient, or tainted with organic matter ; and if persons are allowed 

 free entrance, suffering with dangerous infectious diseases, and no well- 

 directed efforts are made to destroy the noxious matters thus intro- 

 duced, misery, disease, and a fearful rate of mortality, will be the nor- 

 mal results. The few who make diligent efforts to apply the rules of 

 sanity are powerless in removing the obvious causes of the prevailing 

 misery and death-gloom, and, like Lot, for safety, must flee the city. 



With a private and public hygiene thoroughly understood and 

 effectively maintained, there is not an intelligent physician in our land 

 who would not acknowledge that the result would be to diminish the 

 prevalence of disease at least one-half, and to send the average ex- 

 pectation of life, at a bound, up a decade of years. 



Taking into consideration the fact that it is within the power of 

 sanitary regulations to prevent yellow fever, as was shown in New 

 Orleans while under occupancy during the late war by the Union 

 forces for more than two years, where over 100,000 unacclimated sol- 

 diers were stationed, or passed through the city, without a single case 

 of the disease originating there ; that it is possible to stamp out the 

 germs of Asiatic cholera and small-pox, and say, " Thus far shalt thou 

 go, and no farther ; " and taking into consideration that the average 

 duration of life has been extended during the past two centuries from 

 nineteen to thirty-one years, by a slow appreciation and imperfect ap- 

 plication of sanitary law alone ; taking these, and many other facts of 

 a like character, into consideration, it does not seem too much to say 

 that it is within the power of any one with a moderately good consti- 

 tution to say whether he will choose to cut short his days and die the 

 violent death of disease, or whether he will extend the powers of his 

 body to their normal limits, and so die from the effects of old age, 

 or from the gradual wearing out of the most imperfect organ of his 

 body. 



Pecuniarily, the results of properly-applied sanitary law would be 

 immensely successful ; the cent of prevention would be more than 

 worth the dollar of cure. It is estimated that from a half to three- 

 fourths of the inhabitants of our principal cities are sick some time 

 during each year of ordinary salubrity. The loss of time which there- 



