MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 347 



children of the poorer classes to its relentless thraldom. Pure air, 

 abundant light, a suitable quantity of nutritious food and cleanliness 

 are, in a degree, denied them. They carry in their faces enduring 

 traces of want, privation, and suffering, which have set their seal 

 on the youthful brow. The listless face with vacant eyes speak with 

 more emphasis than words of the fearful neglect or violation of the 

 physical laws of nature. This does not end the evil, for the enervated 

 body and blunted intellect become a matter of hereditary transmis- 

 sion. It may be truly said : 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and 

 the children's teeth are set on edge." 



We are forced to recognize the fact that the loss of every human 

 life from preventable disease is not only a tax upon the wealth of a 

 state but a great sorrow to the family. It is claimed that at least one- 

 third of all the cases of sickness and deaths that occur are preventa- 

 ble. What suffering, to say nothing of the continual tax on health 

 and life, which are in direct antagonism to a general prosperity. Its 

 ill effects are far-reaching ; the tendency a deterioration of the race. 

 Let Asiatic cholera come, smiting the young and the old, withering 

 the pride of manhood and the beauty of youth, robbing the social cir- 

 cle, and the family in the garments of grief, spreading gloom and strik- 

 ing the panic of sudden death ; then, for a time, the value of public 

 health, and the legal statutes to protect it, will be observed; but the 

 sacrifice has been made ; you cannot retrace ; you can and must sub- 

 mit. 



How can we best subserve the welfare of the state, of the com- 

 munity and of the citizen in the promotion of sanitary measures? I 

 feel certain that I have no hearers in this intellectual audience so 

 supremely selfish that they can ask without the blush of shame, "Am 

 I my brother's keeper?" I pity the man, I care not how high hie 

 position in society, who is unconscious of his obligations to his fellow 

 beings; he is losing the life-giving, sanctifying influence of an ap- 

 proving conscience, that well-spring of moral vitality by which man 

 is distinguished from the brute. 



"That man may last, but never lives. 

 Who much receives, but nothing gives; 

 Whom none can love, whom none can thank. 

 Creation's blot, creation's blank." 



Political economy will calculate the money value of a human life 

 and compute the loss to society by an untimely death ; hence we claim 

 the state has a right to assume control over the factors involved in 

 the preservation of health and the prolongation of human life. 



It is an axiom that "knowledge is power." It is eqally true that 

 ignorance is power; it stalks through the land freighted with calami- 

 ties ; it scatters broadcast germs of disease ; it leaves sickness, death 



