^74 VESTIGES OF THE 



air are necessary to the proper performance of some 

 of the most important of the organic functions, and thus 

 are stimulated to frequent ablution, and to a right 

 ventilation of our parlours and sleeping apartments. 

 And so on with the othei- causes of disease. Reason 

 may not opei'ate very powerfully to these purposes in an 

 early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore 

 have been endured from diseases in past ages ; but these 

 are not necessarily to be endured always. As civilisa- 

 tion advances, reason acquires a greater ascendency; the 

 causes of the evils are seen and avoided ; and disease 

 shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass. The 

 experience of our own country places this in a striking 

 light. In the middle ages, when large towns had no 

 police regulations, society w^as at frequent intervals 

 scourged by pestilence. The third of the people of 

 Europe are said to have been carried oft' by one epi- 

 demic. Even in London the annual mortality has 

 greatly sunk within a century. The improvement in 

 human life, which has taken place since the construc- 

 tion of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equally 

 remarkable. Modern tables still show a prodigious 

 mortality among the young in all civilised countries — 

 evidently a i-esult of some prevalent error in the usual 

 modes of rearing them. But to remedy this evil there 

 is the sagacity of the human mind, and the sense to 

 adopt any reformed plans wdiicli may be shown to be 

 necessary. By a change in the management of an 

 orphan institution in London, during the last fifty years, 

 an immense reduction in the mortality took place. We 

 may of course hope to see measures devised and adopted 

 for producing a similar improvement of infant life 

 throughout the world at large. 



Tn this ])art of our sul)ject, tl^.e most (lillicult jioinl 



