396 [Assembly 



while both it and rheumatism are frequent among the residents of 

 damp and dark cellars. 



Consumption is an instance of a disease of individual character, 

 but which is, to a very considerable extent, in its commencement 

 and progress, influenced by the circumstances surrounding the patient. 

 The same may be said of scrofula especially, of which, indeed, many 

 other diseases are only accompaniments or s}mptoms. 



While there is scarcely a disease which may not at times become 

 epidemic or endemic, there are some strikingly and uniformly so; 

 ex. gr.: fevers of various kinds, as yellow, typhus, intermittent, and 

 likewise small pox, scarletina, cholera, measles, &c. 



Summer is the season generally deemed most prolific in diseases; 

 the cause usually assigned for this is the heat of the weather acting 

 upon animal and vegetable matter, producing more extensive and 

 rapid decomposition, the gases from which are generally imagined 

 to be so destructive to health and life. It is true that certain dis- 

 eases prevail mostly during the hot months — these are yellow fever, 

 cholera infantum, and the like, while typhoid and bilious diseases 

 are frequent in autumn, the latter also attributable to the same causes. 

 The quantity of these offensive vegetable and animal materials is, 

 therefore, among other things, supposed to be, in a considerable 

 degree, the generator and regulator of the intensity, of these diseases. 

 But this is not by any means the whole of this subject. By a refer- 

 ence to some of the Annual Mortality Reports, it will be seen that 

 sometimes as great a number of deaths occur during the cold months 

 as during the hot. These are mostly of those affections attributable 

 to the influence of a cold and of increased moisture, principally dis- 

 eases of the lungs. To a certain degree this view of causes is cor- 

 rect, but in both cases, a well-directed enquiry into the condition in 

 which people live, the position and arrangement of their working 

 and lodging rooms, the character of their food, their habits of dress 

 and cleanliness, the well or ill ventilated rooms they occupy by day 

 and night, would, in this city, as it has done in other places, devel- 

 ope an amount of ignorance and inattention to the laws of life which 

 would astound the most credulous, and fully account for the great 

 and premature mortality of our citizens. 



At all seasons of the year there is an amount of sickness and death 

 in this, as in all large cities, far beyond those of less densely peopled, 

 more airy and open places, such as country residences. Even in vil- 



