168 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION H. 
it seems worth wlile to attempt to answer this question. I 
believe it happened for reasons incidental to the population of a 
new country by emigrants from an old one. Perhaps this may 
be illustrated by discussing a remark which fell recently from 
that distinguished sanitarian, Sir Douglas Galton, K.C.B., F.R.5., 
in the course of an address he delivered before the Sanitary 
Institute. He said: “In colonies sites abound that, with 
ordinary prudence, might have been kept in a healthy condition, 
but in which ignorance and carelessness have in some cases 
produced, and in others may produce, conditions causing wide- 
spread disease and death.” That remark has reference especially 
to the filth-diseases, and to fever, which has its mode of spread 
in conditions which would warrant the application to it of the 
same epithet ; these are the distinctively preventable diseases, of 
distinctively local diffusion; and we know very well that they 
are among the most important of all the causes of death that 
swell our mortality, about one-ninth of the total deaths in urban 
districts being due to them alone. There is therefore something 
in the criticism, something to warrant it ; but I venture to think 
that more appears to be at first sight than will stand analysis. 
Settlers do not enter into an inheritance. A hundred years ago 
a thousand persons sat down upon these shores, who by natural 
inwrease and by immigration have become three and a half 
millioms to-day. That band when they landed began a struggle 
for the bare neecessaries of life ; and when, after long years, they 
had secured a measuit® of success, a similar struggle was under- 
taken again and again qin distant parts of the continent by 
oft-shoots from the originals society. When, at last, production 
exceeded immediate requirennents, and some revenue became 
available, it was spent upon tehose objects which are always 
among the first needs of a community thus established—I mean 
the maintenance of order and estaiblishment of communications. 
These, and not sanitary measures, «are the prime conditions of 
corporate life. But at all events sarleitation could not early secure 
special attention in such a communitky, because the diseases most 
directly amenable to it do not begin tto show themselves in recog- 
nisable form until the aggregation cgf men upon comparatively 
small areas has become considerable. 1: Prevalence of that class of 
diseases is attendant upon city life, abud so constantly that, of a 
people among whom that class of disea, ses 1s known to prevail, city 
life may be predicated. But, it will be observed, by the time a 
population has become urban, a certain organisation, or at least 
certain habits of life, have been deviased or fallen into before the 
danger referred to is felt, and have be?come more or less fixed and 
difficult to alter by the time necedésity for alteration becomes 
apparent. In themselves these constitiute an obstacle to the reforms 
which are then seen to be required. .] That nearly, and in relation 
to that one class of diseases that prevcisely, is where we find our- 
