PREVENTABLE DISEASES. 77 



with such magnitude, by the State, because they require a 

 pecuniary outlay beyond the depth of individual efforts and 

 private purses. Authority must be had to pursue and inves- 

 tigate where local prejudice, greed, and selfishness will do all 

 in their power to hinder and overcome. The strong arm of 

 government must come in to force men to relinquish prac- 

 tices which are pernicious to the people, even if they demand 

 a sacrifice of money, habits, prejudices, and notions. 



Our reliable authorities now declare to us that at least 

 one-third of the diseases of modern life are preventable ; 

 and, to confirm this statement, localities can be mentioned 

 where the death-rate has been reduced several per cent in a 

 few years by a practice in the direction of this idea. One in- 

 stance must suffice. At North Wickford in England, in 1840, 

 the death-rate was twenty-seven in a thousand ; and in 1867 

 this same rate was reduced to seventeen in the thousand, — 

 a diminution of ten per cent in twenty-seven years. And 

 while one-third of all disease may probably be prevented by 

 obedience to the laws of public sanitation, a much larger per 

 cent can be reduced among the zymotic diseases, the filth, 

 the contagious and infectious diseases ; those in the main 

 produced by a fermentable poison in the soil, water, or air, 

 — a poison which is mainly furnished by the decomposition 

 of the waste, the filth, the necessary excreta of man and 

 domestic animals, when not properly cared for. Dr. Simon, 

 chief medical officer of the English Privy Council, says that 

 " the deaths which we in each year register in this country 

 (now about five hundred thousand) are fully a hundred and 

 twenty-five thousand more numerous than they would be if 

 existing knowledge of the chief causes of disease as affecting 

 masses of population were reasonably well applied through- 

 out England ; " and this is, I believe, the common conviction 

 of persons who have studied the subject. Surely an impres- 

 sive thought, that the lives of a hundred and twenty-five 

 thousand people could be prolonged, if only a few simple 

 rules of health were better known and more faithfully car- 

 ried out ! 



Prominent among these diseases, and one specially affect- 

 ing the farmer's life, is typhoid-fever, — a disease usually 

 springing from his carelessness or ignorance ; one whose 

 germs are produced under his own eye, on his own home- 

 stead, and because he neglects his own filth. 



