THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



531 



had been given them to educate and to train — that 

 these duties could not be entirely cast upon the shoulders 

 either of the day-school or of the Sabbath-school 

 teacher, but must be done by themselves — their homes 

 would become the abodes of virtue and of peace. We 

 may multiply our economic institutions as much as we 

 please, but they will never be properly taken advantage 



of, nor exercise a salutary influence, until comfortable and 

 clean dwellings become the rule, and not, as now, the 

 exception — until working men, and working men's 

 wives, feel that there is more truth than sentiment 

 in the old song, "There is no place like home." 



R. S. B. 



REVIEW. 

 FEVER IN AGRICULTURAL DISTRICTS ; Being a Report on Cases of Fever occurring 



IN THE PARISH OF GrEAT HoRWOOD, IN THE COUNTY OF BUCKINGHAM. 



By H. W. AcLAND, M.D., F.E.S., &c., Oxford and London, 

 John H. and J; Parker. 



We have ever considered the value set upon human 

 life as the highest test of the civilization to which a 

 people have attained, and that every means adopted 

 for its general preservation and duration are 

 so many onward steps in their progress toward a 

 perfect state of society. For obvious reasons, which 

 we cannot here adduce, it is only under Christianity 

 that this test ever has been, or ever can be, fully 

 comprehended ; and the degree in which it obtains 

 amongst nominally Christian nations mai'ks the purity 

 of the faith professed by them. If we find that in 

 Naples, for instance, the annual number of murders is 

 two hundred to the million, whilst iu England they are 

 only four to the million, we may justly conclude that 

 in Naples the principles of Christianity, whatever may 

 be the apparent devotion of the peojile, have but little 

 influence upon their moral character, whilst they thus 

 recklessly disregard the] highest obligation enjoined 

 upon them by the religion they profess. 



With these views, briefly expressed, we consider the 

 investigations into the principles of sanitary economj', 

 which of late years have attracted so much of the public 

 attention, as indicating a great advance in the progress 

 of national and individual happiness. To know the 

 causes of contagion and disease opens a way for their 

 prevention and cure ; whilst to enforce the means of 

 prevention, and apply those of cure, even against the 

 will of the subjects of their influence, is perfectly con- 

 sistent with the liberty of the people, because the evils 

 are cumulative, involving the welfare of a community. 

 For instance, we have in our eye a short street in a large 

 city, in which fever is the normal condition, and from 

 which it was continually disseminated in the sur- 

 rounding district. In a corner house, in a principal 

 street which was subject to the malaria from that hack 

 street, eight families were successively taken off by 

 fever before the authorities thought of interfering. 

 This is but an extreme case of what occurs every day 

 in most large towns, where the filth and squalor of the 

 back lanes prove the nursery of disease and the means 

 of its extension. 



We have been led to make these reflections by the 



perusal of a " report on cases of fever" in a parish in 

 Buckinghamshire*. The disease first broke out at 

 Michaelmas, 1857, and continued at least up to the 9th 

 Juily in the present year. It was purely local, or 

 endemic, and therefore the causes were more accessible 

 to investigation. The population of the village was 

 704, the number of cases 125, and of deaths 18. Thus 

 17i per cent., or one-sixth of the population, took the 

 fever, and 14 per cent, of these died. If a similar 

 amount of disease and mortality were to take place in 

 London, reckoning the population at 2j million, the 

 cases would amount to 444,250, and of deaths to 63,4G4. 

 The disease was what used formerly to be called " com- 

 mon continued fever running into typhus, but is now 

 designated by the faculty by the more distinctive name 

 of typhoid"; and Dr. Acland states that "in well- 

 marked cases typhoid ftver is more fatal than typhus," 

 although the well-known malignity of the latter has 

 given it the pre-eminence for fatality amongst non- 

 medical men. 



The investigation instituted by Dr. Acland, at the re- 

 quest of the Board of Guardians, showed that although 

 the first case was the probable result of a visit to Buck- 

 ingham, where fever was then prevalent, it was ren- 

 dered general in the parish wherever the conditions 

 were conducive to its attacks. These are close and ill- 

 ventilated bed-rooms, overflowing privies near the 

 dwelling-house, accumulations of animal and vegetable 

 matter in a state of decomposition near the house-door 

 or window, want of a back door to the cottage, ground 

 floors sunk below the surface of the surrounding soil, 

 old thatch in a state of decomposition, &c., &c. All 

 these causes are so many poisons awaiting but a condi- 

 tion of body in the inmates favourable to their recep- 

 tion, to enter the system with fatal efiect. A cold, 

 over fatigue, mental anxiety, scanty or unwholesome 

 food, prepare the subject, into which the virus dis- 

 seminates itself, and seizes upon the constitution ; and 

 according to the strength of which, to offer resistance, 

 or rather to the predisposing habits of the individual, 

 will, as a general rule, be the ultimate result. 



We repeat again — for it is of the utmost consequence 



