46 HISTORICAL EETROSPECT. 



own nation, without asking, what has saved her from a like fate ? 

 A brief historical retrospect will show you this. During the four- 

 teenth century our ancestors had to grapple with that fierce plague 

 named the " Black Death," which destroyed nine out of every ten 

 whom it attacked. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries found 

 them struggling with the " Sweating Sickness," killing its victims 

 in a few hours, and leaving a heavy death-roll. For three cen- 

 turies prior to the close of the eighteenth, that terrible distemper 

 called "Gaol Fever," taking its origin in our prisons, never ceased 

 to infect the Army, Navy, and the civil population. Another 

 plague, called the Oriental, prevailed through much of the six- 

 teenth and seventeenth centuries ; its smallest death-toll being one 

 in five, but often three in five. Then, there followed Asiatic cholera, 

 with its attendant epidemic dysentry ; and lastly, unvaccinated 

 small-pox, not less ghastly in its death-rate or repulsive con- 

 comitants. This dark catalogue of pestilences was more or less 

 associated with those fevers confusedly known under the various 

 names of spotted, typhus, relapsing, famine, and typhoid. With 

 our greater light, it is difficult to understand why the nation so 

 slowly awoke to the full comprehension of the enormous jeopardy 

 and cost" of these invasions. It was only with the advent of John 

 Howard in 1794 that there came also the dawn of an epoch 

 marked by a regard to public health, whose growth and influence 

 are, I believe, the causes of our being now in the van of civiliza- 

 tion. You all doubtless know what is meant by John Howard's 

 parliamentary triumph. Single handed he obtained at a time 

 when such concessions were a great victory an Act to inquire 

 into the state of our prisons. What were the results of this Act? 

 These pestilential dens, which, for centuries, had poisoned every 

 stream of our national life, were abolished, and, as a matter of 

 fact, our prisons are now the healthiest places in the country. 

 What I wish you to particularly note here is the fact that the 

 second step in this great reform was brought about by an Act of 

 the Legislature the first being that of Howard's representation 

 of the facts. 



Two years later, there occurred another Parliamentary triumph 

 when the discoverer of vaccination was voted 30,000 to extend the 



