BY E. M. JOHNSTON, P.L.S. 31 



people living in country districts, and making due allowance 

 for the important excess of tlie age element in urban dis- 

 tricts, there is still a very great difference, which is difl&cult 

 to account for satisfactorily in a young country ; and while I 

 am of opinion that the lower death-rate in country districts 

 is not due to the relative superiority in artificial modes of 

 sanitation as compared with urban districts, it is becoming 

 evident that the closer contiguity of dwellings in towns 

 demands that artificial sanitary measures in the latter should 

 be specially framed to provide for those unfavourable condi- 

 tions peculiar to all crowded centres of population. In. 

 villages and townships the several dwellings, even although 

 more imperfectly conditioned in themselves as regards local 

 sanitary provision, are naturally more perfectly insulated 

 from each other by more or less broad regions of pure air. 

 The poisoned exhalations of every individual dwelling do not 

 spread and become more virulent by coming into direct 

 contact with the poisoned atmosphere of neighbouring 

 dwellings, but are at once dissipated or purified by that 

 septum of pure air which it is reasonable to infer insulates 

 dwelling from dwelling in thinly populated country districts. 

 In urban districts, on the contrary, the septum of pure air 

 surrounding each dwelling does not exist, or only exists 

 temporarily or imperfectly, and consequently, notwithstanding 

 special medical supervision, purer water supply, and in many 

 cases superior sanitary provisions, the death-rate is invariably 

 higher, and the atmosphere of every well regulated dwelling, 

 is more or less in direct contact with the exhalations of every 

 noxious centre within the town. Hence it would appear that 

 the absence of the insulating septum of pure air around 

 town dwellings renders the inmates of every house more 

 liable to the attack of all infectious diseases which may be 

 floating in any part of the atmosphere within the town. 

 Even the otherwise healthy wind may be the agent which 

 directs the fatal effluvia from an unhealthy centre upon a 

 relatively pure and healthy division of the town. 



A town dwelling, therefore, unlike country dwellings, is 

 insecure as regards health so long as any centre or dwelling 

 within its boundaries is allowed to vitiate the common 

 undivided atmosphere with poisonous exhalations. A special 

 responsibility therefore rests upon Town Boards of Health 

 to prevent, as far as possible, the creation and spreading of 

 all noxious exhalations anywhere within their province. 

 Improved antiseptic measures should be devised and rigor- 

 ously enforced in every part of the community. 



There can be no doubt that urban and country district 

 death-rates prove that the crowding together of human 

 beings in particular centres is injurious to the health, and 



