1868. | The Public Health. 443 
given to the spread of information on the treatment of infancy, so 
that the foul stain underlying the high rate of infantile mortality 
(43 per cent.) may be removed by diminishing the death-rate. 
If any town in Scotland has acquired a notoriety over the others 
for the fatality of its epidemic disease, that town is certainly Greenock. 
A recent epidemic of typhus in that town (population 43,894 in 
1861) was so dreadfully fatal, that it carried away no fewer than 
five of the medical men, who were perhaps even too faithful to the 
call of duty. The risk incurred by medical practitioners in Greenock 
from typhus, has, for many years, been very great. Of those who 
are at present in the town, it is probable that one-half have at one 
time or another passed through the ordeal of typhus. The fact of 
the extraordinary mortality just referred to created an excitement in 
the town, which resulted in a proposal to erect a monument in me- 
mory of the medical men who were stricken in the strife in the 
combat with the disease. <A site was got for the proposed monument, 
and a design was prepared by Sir J. Noel Paton, and the public 
gratitude towards the memory of those who were faithful in duty 
seemed there to have completely evaporated. Greenock is now in 
a somewhat improved sanitary condition ; but the authorities of the 
town may thank Dr. James Wallace, and not themselves, for it. So 
far as we can learn, he even incurred very serious displeasure from 
the “ powers that be,” because he would not rest content with things 
as they were, and threatened to bring the power of the law to bear 
on those who should always be ready to enforce it for the public 
good. 
