199 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 



cendency ; the causes of the evils are seen and avoided , 

 and disease shrinks into a comparatively narrow com- 

 pass. The experience of our own country places this 

 in a striking light. In the Middle Ages, when, large 

 towns had no police regulations, society was every now 

 and then scourged by pestilence. The third of the peo- 

 ple of Europe are said to have been carried off by one 

 epidemic. Even in London, the annual mortality has 

 greatly sunk within a century. The improvement in 

 human life, which has taken place since the construction 

 . of the Northampton tables by Dr. Price, is equally re- 

 markable. Modern tables still show a prodigious mor- 

 tality among the young in all civilized countries — evi- 

 dently a result of some prevalent error in the usual 

 modes of rearing them. But to remedy this evil there is 

 the sagacity of the human mind, and the sense to adopt 

 any reformed plans which may be shown to be necessary. 

 By a change in the management of an orphan institution 

 m London, during the last fifty years, an immense re- 

 duction in the mortality took place. We may of course 

 hope to see measures devised and adopted for producing 

 a similar improvement of infant life throughout the world 

 at large. 



In this part of our subject, the most difficult point cer- 

 tainly lies in those occurrences of disease where the 

 afflicted individual has been in no degree concerned in 

 bringing the visitation upon himself. Daily experience 

 shows us infectious disease arising in a place where the 

 natural laws in respect of cleanliness are neglected, and 

 then spreading into regions where there is no blame of 

 this kind. We then see the innocent suffering equally 

 with those who may be called the guilty. Nay, the be- 

 nevolent physician who comes to succor the miserable 

 beings w r hose error may have caused the mischief is 

 sometimes seen to fall a victim to it, while many of his 

 patients recover. We are also only too familiar with the 

 transmission of diseases from erring parents to innocent 

 children, who, accordingly, suffer, and perhaps die pre- 

 maturely, as it were, for the sins of others. After all, 

 however painful such cases may be in contemplation, 

 they cannot be regarded in any other light than as excep- 

 tions from arrangements, the general working of which 

 is beneficial 



With regard to the innocence of the suffering parties, 



