Sanitary Eekoum. 471 



Tliere can be no good reason for this frightful mortality. 

 It nivist be apparent to eveiy one that there is (to use a 

 homely phrase,) a pretty large screw loose somewhere. 

 That there exists a powerful and terrible element that has^ 

 until recently, escaped observation, is l)ut too evident. 



History is replete with accounts of the terrible visitations 

 of disease, that have decimated the human race, at no great 

 intervals of time. We have all read of that Abyssinian cap- 

 tain, whose whole army of nearly two hundred thousand 

 men was destroyed in a single night by the plague. 



Says Josephus : " It is barely five hundred years since 

 the whole world was devastated by the black death, destroy- 

 ing one-third of all mankind." 



The ravages of the plague, cholera and yellow fever are 

 too well known to need further mention here, and, as they 

 are not of a type that is likely to prevail in our climate, 

 we may dismiss them with the single remark, that they are 

 infectious or c(jntagious, and tlie natural outgrowth of bad 

 sanitary conditions. 



Although we may have no reason to fear the invasion of 

 either of the above named, we are far from being safe 

 from infectious diseases. We have all the contagious 

 diseases. Then we have all of those now claimed to be 

 infectious, which includes such as pneumonia and consump- 

 tion, not to say anything of those terrible ones — canker_ 

 rash and diphtheria — and all the different forms of fever. 

 These are claimed (and with an array of proof liard to be 

 gainsaid,) to be all infectious, (ill contagious and all 

 preventable. 



It is likely that all present have seen, within the past 



