June] CARPENTER — ON VITAL STATISTICS. 205 



It is only distracting attention from the main and solemn 

 issue, thus to beat around the bush. Every thoughtful person 

 who has observed and studied the simplest fiicts and first prin- 

 ciples in sanitary science, must be aware that a sufficient cause 

 for all our deaths is to be found in the filth and pollutions which 

 are allowed to remain in our midst, and which poison the air, 

 more or less, of the whole city, but most of all of the low and 

 Bwampy districts. A large proportion of the inhabitants pour 

 their slops daily on the spongy soil around their dwellings ; house 

 drains or even paved water-courses are little known ; the contents 

 of privies surcharge the porous earth around; and our back-yards, 

 unusually large as compared with English cities, and which 

 ought therefore to add greatly to our healthiness, are only so 

 many more square feet soaked through and through with foetid 

 matter, forming (except during the merciful winter frost) an 

 incesssant poison factory, wafting disease and death into our 

 dwellings. A large number of our houses are built on stumps 

 driven into this putrid soil or even marsh ; the cellars are always 

 charged with miasms, which find their way into the upper rooms ; 

 and too often the houses, even if not back to back, have no doors 

 or windows except on one side. Very lately an M.D. of this 

 city, with above the average of reputation, planted a group of 

 cottages of this description on one of the worst undrained swamps 

 in our midst. As if these evils, which may not meet the gaze of 

 strangers, were not enough, the corporation persist in laying most 

 of the streets in soft limestone, which in a very few days is ground 

 to fine dust, and soon becomes charged with eifete animal matter, 

 in which form it enters our dwellings and lungs ; or else it is in a 

 state of mud, which emits so nauseous a stench that cottagers, 

 who have shut their back windows to keep out the smell of the 

 yards, are obliged to shut the front also to keep out the smell 

 of the street. It is impossible faithfully to execute the contracts 

 for street-cleaning, while this stone, long since reported against by 

 the City Surveyor, and theoretically abandon-ad by the Road 

 Committee, continues in full use : and as to the vaunted scaveng- 

 ing by-law, the Council have re/used the money to carry it out ! 

 It may be said with very few exceptions, that in the more crowd- 

 ed parts of the city inhabited by all except the wealthy, there is 

 scarcely a square yard of ground which is not charged with efi"ete 

 matter, ready to generate poisonous gases under the influence of 

 every summer sun. 



