AMONG THE SLUMS. 41 



opportunity for the collection of any connected evidence 

 which might throw additional light on those psychological 

 problems which still puzzle the world, but may some day be 

 satisfactorily solved. 



In the long rambles which he was in the habit of taking, 

 through the by-ways and squalid labyrinths of our great 

 -towns, seeking for opportunities of improving the condition 

 of the poor, he was painfully impressed with the want of 

 sanitary precautions in thickly populated districts, where 

 poverty, dirt, and vice were in grim alliance. Sanitary 

 reformers had delivered learned discourses to the fashionable 

 audiences of learned societies, pointing out the conditions 

 of health and exposing our deficiencies in the matters of 

 pure air and water : but there was no real attempt to place 

 within the reach of the people a substantial remedy for 

 these evils. 



Robert Boyle believed, and rightly, that pure air was the 

 first of all sanitary conditions, and he had observed the 

 general neglect of this condition in the construction of 

 public and private buildings. 



He knew that the time was not far distant when a very 

 great change for the better would be necessary, to meet the 

 requirements of a public better educated on such vital 

 questions, and he felt that every effort should be made to 

 find a simple method of ventilation which would, with 



