180 
WAVES OF HEAT AND AVAVES OF DEATH. 
BY B. W. RICHAEDSON^ M.D. 
*o» 
W HILE our sanitarians are busily occupied in pointing out 
those evils of our social condition on wbich many 
diseases rest that need never be seen or developed but for our 
own misdoings, and while it is our duty to listen to what they 
have to say, and to follow the simple precepts which they lay 
down for our guidance, it is well for us not to lose sight of the 
all-important fact that there are certain influences at work in 
the production of diseases over which the sanitarian has no 
control. In some senses, indeed, sanitary science, in the midst 
of great achievements, has, to a certain extent, been an ob- 
struction to scientific progress. This is no paradox. AYhen 
om’ first sanitary reformers commenced their great works they 
had such a strong case in their hands, they had such prominent 
evils to contend with, they had such flattering promises to 
offer, such rewards for the waiting hoping' masses, and such 
triumphs for the zeal and labours of their own disciples, that 
when they once obtained a hearing they were heard to the 
exclusion of nearly all else. Oh ! the happy days that were to 
come, — the millennium of health, how near was its advent ! 
Henceforth we were not to cure diseases in detail, but to 
prevent them in phalanx. The epidemics were to be wiped 
out, and the nation that nurtured them was to be stamped un- 
civilized, gross, and dangerous, — a gigantic upas tree, infecting 
a world elsewise physically pure. 
I, who have been one of the stanchest advocates of sanitary 
progress, cannot, I hope, be doubted in repeating that the re- 
sults of sanitary work, although they have fulfilled much, have 
not been prosecuted without some disadvantage. I think that 
they have tended rather largely to damp the energies of many 
able and observant men in that line of medical inquiry which 
professes to treat disease ; I fear they have thrown a cloud of 
scepticism over the whole art of treating ; and I am certain they 
have given rise to the invention of sundry theories and specu- 
lations, which do not account for various common and all- 
important phenomena. But that which is most to be complained 
of is the tendency to which they liEive led, of ignoring pervading 
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