524 
NATURE 
[Oct. 1, 1885 
to the labours of the late Dr. Parkes and to those of his 
successor, Dr. de Chaumont, is that, comparing the results 
of thirty years ago with those which now obtain, there is 
a saving in the home Army of two battalions per annum. 
Some substantial progress is also being made in the same 
direction as regards the general public, and when it is 
more fully understood that preventible diseases as a rule 
destroy those members of the population who are most 
remunerative in so far as the State is concerned, and that, 
speaking generally, each such premature death means a 
loss of at least too/, even parsimonious members of 
sanitary authorities will not mind expending a little more 
of the public money in so good a cause. 
Leicester was well chosen for this year’s gathering, for 
in many respects the town has acquired some reputation 
in health matters. It may be regarded as the head- 
quarters of the anti-vaccination party; it prides itself, 
not without cause, on the efforts it has made to control 
the spread of infectious diseases ; and it takes precedence 
amongst those English towns in which autumnal diarrhoea 
is so fatal to the infantile population. As regards the 
question of vaccination it would be premature to draw 
any general inferences from the Leicester results, for 
although during recent years only a comparatively 
small portion of the infantile population have been 
vaccinated, yet a vast majority of the inhabitants 
are fairly well protected against small-pox, and it 
is by no means so very strange that a disease which 
usually recurs in an epidemic form only after a lapse ot 
years, should for a time remain absent from Leicester. 
Still, we frankly admit that the day of reckoning has been 
somewhat long in coming; but there are exceptional 
reasons for this. And in the first place we would note 
that Leicester is not so free from small-pox as is generally 
imagined. The Registrar-General’s returns have, it is 
true, long shown an almost absolute blank as regards 
small-pox mortality there, but it must be remembered 
that the Leicester Small-pox Hospital, where the deaths 
from this disease take place, is not in the borough, and 
hence that the mortality occasioned is registered in alto- 
gether another district. Then again, the sanitary authority 
of Leicester, by the aid of a system of compulsory notifi- 
cation of infectious diseases, acquire the earliest know- 
ledge as to the existence of cases of small-pox, and 
having provided themselves with an isolation hospital, 
the patients are at once removed, and their houses and 
clothing are efficiently disinfected. It may be said that 
any other town could do the same, and so vaccination 
would become unnecessary. But this is not so. Re- 
moval to hospital is only compulsory under conditions 
which, were objection raised to it by the people, would 
make this early isolation impracticable, and all popula- 
tions are not so proud of their defiance of one of the laws 
of the country as to submit without resistance to the 
steps which are held necessary in order to prove that this 
law is a superfluous one. But Leicester goes much 
further than this. The authorities not only remove the 
sick, but they remove the healthy members of the sick 
person’s family, and hold them in a species of quarantine 
until they know that they have escaped infection. Such 
a step may be very desirable from a health point of view, 
but it is altogether illegal, and it is quite certain that if 
any attempt were made to enforce such a system in other 
parts of the kingdom it would be resisted. The majority 
of the nation would also hold it to be unnecessary ; and the 
recent publication by the German Government of the 
Report of a Commission showing that since re-vaccination 
was made compulsory in 1874 nota single death from 
small-pox has occurred in their Army, affords ample 
evidence that the simple operation of vaccination can 
fully meet all the difficulty. 
But little further light was thrown, at the meeting, upon 
that obscure zymotic diarrhcea which annually causes so 
large a mortality in Leicester. But Dr. E. W. Buck, who 
has made the subject a special study, probably pointed 
out the essential cause of this fatality by showing how a 
large portion of the population of Leicester was exposed 
to the influence of a water-logged soil charged with de- 
composing organic matter. Temperature so largely 
influences this mortality that it was at one time regarded 
as its sole cause ; but it is certain that a high temperature 
alone is powerless to produce it, whereas the effect of 
temperature on such conditions as obtain in Leicester 
must be very potent in favouring the development of 
organic germs, such as are now supposed to lie at the 
root of the evil. Extensive inquiry is needed as to this 
subject, and we hope that the results of the investigation 
which have been conducted for some years past by the 
Medical Department of the Local Government Board 
will soon be made public. 
Amongst the many other matters of interest which 
were dealt with at the Congress is that of the provision 
of dwelling-accommodation for the working classes, and 
in view of the steadily extending practice of massing to- 
gether vast numbers of human beings in great buildings 
where storey is piled upon storey, the warning uttered by 
Mr. Gordon Smith, President of the Engineering and 
Architectural Section, and the occupant of an important 
official appointment which adds weight to his opinion, 
should receive careful consideration. He asserts that in 
this class of buildings there has been an excessive 
infantile death-rate, and it is certain that the provision of 
ample open space about dwellings, which is, as regards 
ordinary dwellings, being more insisted on than ever, is 
especially necessary in the interests of child-life, which is 
so extremely sensitive to such insanitary surroundings as 
influence the quality of the air breathed. 
The question of a rational system of burial was dis- 
cussed at the last meeting of the Congress in connection 
with a paper by the Rev. F. Lawrence, who quoted the 
authority of the burial service of the Church of England 
as suggesting a system which would allow of the rapid 
action of the soil upon the dead, and who advocated 
burial at a depth of three or four feet only in coffins 
designed to ensure speedy perishability, and laid singly 
at a depth of three or four feet only from the surface. 
The advocates of cremation were naturally represented, 
but the progress of this method for the disposal of the 
dead is hindered by considerations which it is not easy to 
overcome. Foremost amongst these stands the difficulty 
of tracing cases of poisoning, and, even if the public were 
ready to assent generally to post-mortem examinations 
before the cremation was carried into effect, no such 
examination as is usually carried out could be trusted to 
decide whether this species of crime was the cause of 
death or not. Indeeed, in many cases of poisoning the 
most skilled pathological and chemical knowledge is 
required in order to avoid error. On the whole, such 
discussions as have taken place at Leicester tend to 
improvement in matters where change is desirable in the 
interests of public health, and the Institute may be con- 
gratulated on the results of their recent meeting. 
INSECT RAVAGES 
{Pas preservation of our garden and field crops from 
the attacks of injurious and destructive insects is a 
study which Miss E. A. Ormerod has made specially her 
own and which she has carried out with such signal suc- 
cess. Miss Ormerod’s labours in popularising the subject 
so as to bring it within the knowledge of all classes in 
any way connected with agricultural and gardening pur- 
suits aie too well known to need even a reference, so 
thoroughly has she at heart the welfare of our food crops 
and field produce that she has taken other steps, besides 
the dissemination of her well known books, to bring the 
importance of the subject before those who are not likely 
to be reached by the works in question. We refer to the 
