Dec. 22, 1881] 
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every clime. For with the Aippopotamus, the Rhinoceros, 
and the Lion from the south, we have also in abundance 
the Cyrena fluminalis, a shell now characteristic of the 
Valley of the Nile and the rivers of India and China: 
whilst from the north advance to meet them the “ Musk- 
Ox,” the Reindeer, and the Lemming; we have also 
evidence at Walthamstow of the Elk (4/ces madchis). 
To Sir Antonio Brady, then, we are indebted for a most 
valuable collection of Pleistocene mammalia, now happily 
preserved in the British Museum of Natural History, 
Cromwell Road. Nor must we omit to mention that he 
strove by his presence, as a resident at Stratford, and by 
his constant acts of kindness and hospitality to the work- 
men, and by the /avgesse which he freely gave, to rescue 
from destruction these intere ting relics of a pre-historic 
age, which now help to swell the magnificent series of our 
National Museum. 
HENRY WOODWARD 
BRIGHTON HEALTH CONGRESS 
oe Brighton Health Congress, which was opened on 
Tuesday, December 13, and which has been accom- 
panied by an Exhibition of Domestic, Sanitary, and 
Scientific Appliances, has been one of the most success- 
ful of its kind, and by far the most successful of any of 
a purely local character. In origin and in progress it 
has, throughout, been Brightonian, and although many of 
the scholars who communicated addresses and parers 
were outsiders, they came byinvitation. To the Congress 
in the course of the week no less number than 1200 added 
their names as Associates, while the Exhibition was at all 
times well filled, some 400 persons per day, independently 
of the Associates, paying for admission. It is estimated, 
indeed, that altogether between four and five thousand 
persons have been present. We stated last week that the 
Exhibition was presided over by Lord Chichester, and the 
Congress by Dr. Richardson; and we gave a detail of 
the sections and order of proceedings: we shall dwell 
more particularly on the addresses and papers which 
were submitted. 
The President's Opening Address 
Dr. Richardson took for his theme ‘‘ The Seed-Time 
of Health.” In the opening passages he drew a picture 
of life and death in the time when the ancient Greeks 
were in the meridian of their intellectual existence. In 
the midst of the night, when the sun cannot see the 
deeds of men, certain of these were depictel carrying a 
dead child, in all its beauty, to the pyre. They carried it 
in this solemn silence and darkness because of the shame 
they felt that anything so young and beautiful should die 
in what ought to be the seed-time of health. Upon this 
he drew a sharp and striking contrast from our own time. 
He pointed out the great mortality of our children, for 
which we have grief, fond memories, but no shame. We 
accept the events, in short, as if they were natural, and 
erect memorials of them.j After illustrating these 
points, the causes of the great mortality of the young 
were classified under four heads—the inherited, the acci- 
dental, the inflicted, and the acquired. Under the first head 
the influence of hereditary diseases were discussed ; under 
the second head the diseases of an epidemic character, and 
which occur from exposure to one or other of the commu- 
nicable poisons, were considered ; under the third head 
the injuries arising from bad nursing, excessive compe- 
tition in education, and improper feeding, were brought 
under notice ; and under the fourth head the evils inci- 
dent to early resort to smoking, the use of stimulants, 
late hours, and irregular meals, were made subjects of 
comment. What now is wanted, said the President, was 
the ideal of a new nobility. In the wild-boar days of 
human existence; in days when men, hardly emanci- 
pated from lower forms of life, crept out of their caves, 
their huts, their walled prisons, to see their nobler species 
go forth to exercise those rude arts of hunting, fighting, 
revelling, which formed the whole art of civilisation, 
there was a nobility which deserved the name—the repre- 
sentative of necessity. But now, when these arts have de- 
generated into mere childish imitations, mere apedoms of 
the great past, they are but injurious pretensions for nobility 
of soul and body. Once noble, according to the spirit of 
their day they are in this day ignoble. The address con- 
cluded with two applications of thought, one general, the 
other local. The general requested those who rule and 
govern us to look at the seed-time of health as it is, and 
take it as the test of good or bad government. The 
local was addressed to the people of Brighton, that the 
meeting then commencing might be truly useful, and the 
date from whence they should move onwards until the 
shame of mortal events, which the sun should never 
witness, be felt whenever they occur. 
Section A.—Health of Towns 
The president, Mr. Edwin Chadwick, C.B., opened the 
Section on Wednesday with an address on the preven- 
tion of epidemics. He set out by describing the various 
means adopted to stay the great outbreak of cholera in 
1848, in which he took a prominent part, and the deduc- 
tions made from observations then taken. The conclu- 
sions that had been come to then were that to aggregate 
disease in large hospitals was only to increase the danger, 
and that the very best means of preventing the spread of 
infection was by the adoption of sanitary measures at the 
places where, in the cycle of epidemics, they were to be 
expected. He described in a very interesting manner 
the precautions taken at York, at Merthyr Tydvil, at 
Mevagissy in Cornwall, and other places, and the gradual 
decrease of deaths that followed, and he showed that 
similar precautions taken at St. Petersburg, Malta, 
and Memphis, had had the same result. At St. Peters- 
burg, for example, the deaths had decreased from 25,000 
to 3000 in the successive decade. Some other equally 
startling statistics were given by Mr. Chadwick. By the 
returns of the Local Government Board, he calculated 
that we had saved in the death-rate from disease or in- 
fection a quarter of a million of lives, and three million 
cases of sickness, and putting this at a money value, 5/. 
for death and 1/ for a sickness, over four millions of 
money had been saved. In conclusion he portrayed 
with poetical picturesqueness a possible future “when 
medical science shall occupy itself rather with the preven- 
tion of maladies than their cure, when governments shall 
be induced to consider the preservation of a nation’s 
health as important as the promotion of its commerce or 
the maintenance of its conquests, and when we may hope 
to see approach atime in which, after a life spent almost 
without sickness, we shail close the term of an unharassed 
existence by a peaceful Euthanasia.” 
The papers which followed the delivery of Mr. Chad- 
wick’s address were all of them good, and some of them 
of unusual excellence. Mr. Easton’s account of the 
water supply of Brighton was exceedingly interesting and 
able. It led toa sharp and animated debate on the water 
softening process in large towns. Mr. Easton and the 
Mayor, while advocating the principle of softening water, 
seemed inclined rather to lcok upon it as a house- 
hold than a municipal duty. They were opposed by 
several other speakers. Mr. Griffiths followed with a 
paper on the escape of foul gases from ventilating gratings 
on the main sewers of towns. The gist of his argument 
was that the faults were rather in the houses than in the 
sewers. If, he maintained, the sewer system of houses 
was so perfect that nothing could be retained in the sewer 
pipes, and if the houses were thoroughly cut off from the 
sewer, the risks of escape of gas were greatly reduced. 
What was wanted in the sewer was a current of air, not 
ventilation at one point. The defective house drainage 
