INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 35 



philanthropists, and well known and universally respected names 

 are associated with efforts, more or less successful, to correct it. In 

 our day overcrowding has come to be regarded less as an immediate 

 than as a predisposing cause of such diseases as are destructive to 

 life, and its effects upon morals touch our minds more keenly than 

 do those which it produces upon the health. The evils of an atmos- 

 phere rendered impure by exhalations from living bodies are very 

 great, but it is wonderful how long we can endure impurity in the 

 air which we breathe, engendered in this way, and continue to live. 

 For this power to live we are indebted in part to the properties of the 

 gases with which our breathing organs have to do, and impart to the 

 power with which our bodies are endowed of eliminating hurtful sub- 

 stances. But though we live, and may be at our daily duty, we 

 have deviated from health. Changes are going on within us, analo- 

 gous to those, which, under certain circumstances, we call corruption. 

 If in this condition we have to encounter "disease germs," these find 

 in our bodies a very suitable shelter and breeding place, they multi- 

 ply abundantly, and in not a few instances; to such a degree, that 

 they come to deal with us, in effect, very much as maggots do 

 with carrion. 



If we are not overtaken by our foes, the disease germs, or do 

 not succumb to their attacks, there are blood diseases of another 

 kind in store for us, diseases which, in the meantime at least, are 

 supposed to result from imperfect or impure secretion of the blood. 

 Very young children are most likely to be the sufferers from such 

 affections, owing in a great measure to their being kept much within 

 doors ; and, having had them, they suffer from them more or less 

 through life, because when once affected, they are unable to avail 

 themselves ot open air occupations and amusements like their healthy 

 brothers and sisters, and in course of time they become the parents 

 of children unhealthy and stunted like themselves. Happily in our 

 little city, we do not see the evils of atmospheric impurity in the 

 manifold deformities of our children. Our city is too little, we have 

 not made it the Birmingham we expected and desired. Yet though 

 we have been of less size, we were not always in a condition in which 

 we could say that we were free from atmospheric impurity. Time 

 was when Hamilton was noted for its closeness, heat and unhealthi- 

 ness, and when its condition was justly attributed to an unhealthy 



