2 THE INJURY THEY INFLICT. 



from the following points of view : first, the injury they inflict ; 

 secondly, how they originate ; thirdly, their distinctive characters ; 

 fourthly, the conditions under which they spread ; and fifthly, the 

 means necessary for their control and prevention. " It seems 

 certain," writes Mr Simon, Medical Officer to the Privy 

 Council, "that the deaths which occur in this country are 

 fully a third more numerous than they would be if our exist- 

 ing knowledge of the chief causes of disease were reasonably 

 applied throughout the country ; that of deaths which, in this 

 sense, may be called preventable, the average yearly number 

 in England and Wales is about 120,000, and that of the 

 120,000 cases of preventable suffering which thus in every year 

 attain their final place in the death register, each unit represents 

 a larger or smaller group of other cases, in which preventable 

 disease not ending in death, though often of far-reaching ill 

 effects on life has been suffered. . . . Then there is the fact 

 that this terrible continuing tax on human life and welfare, falls 

 with immense over-proportion upon the most helpless classes oi 

 the community ; upon the poor ; the ignorant ; the subordinate : 

 the immature ; upon classes which, in great part through want of 

 knowledge, and in great part because of their dependent position, 

 cannot remonstrate for themselves against the miseries thus 

 brought upon them. And have, in this circumstance, the 

 strongest claim of all claims on a legislature which can justly 

 measure and can abate their sufferings."* 



" Diseases of this class," says Dr Farr, the Registrar-General, 

 "distinguish one country from another, one year from another. 

 They have formed epochs in chronology; and, as Niebuhr 

 has shown, have influenced not only the fates of cities such 

 as Athens and Florence, but of empires ; they decimate armies, 

 disable fleets; they take the lives of criminals that justice 

 has not condemned. They redouble the dangers of crowded 

 hospitals ; they infest the habitations of the poor, and strike the 

 artizan in his strength down from comfort into helpless poverty ; 

 they carry away the infant from the mother's breast, and the old 

 * 13th report of the Medical Officer of the Privy Council. 



