The Health Exhibition. 
354 
[June, 
and filthy inhabitants, are pulled down, and their wood- 
work, after being slightly dressed over, is used in the erection 
of new, pretentious, and highly-rented structures. Whether 
such wood is or is not saturated with the poison of small- 
pox, of scarlet fever, or of typhus, the building speculator 
never cares, and the purchaser or the tenant has no means 
of knowing. These evils cannot be illustrated in any Exhi- 
bition. If they could it would make a far stronger impression 
than any leCtures, articles, or letters. 
From the sins of the builder we may pass to those of the 
tailor, the modiste, and the shoemaker. Here, again, is 
much that cannot be exhibited. Charles Kingsley told us, 
and modern authorities have enforced the sad tale, how the 
superfine garments which Society buys at some fasnionable 
establishment have been made in the den of some sweatei, 
reeking with disease ; may even, whilst unfinished, seive to 
cover the bed of the dying, and may thus convey infection 
to their wearers. How could such grim faCts be brought 
clearly home to the public ? 
Some of the effefts of tight lacing and of high-heeled 
boots might be rendered palpable by means of anatomical 
models ; but if this has been done in the present display it 
has so far escaped our detection. 
We miss likewise any attempt to familiarise the public 
mind with cremation as a means of disposing of the dead. 
A display of the gas-furnace contrived for this purpose, and 
an occasional demonstration of the rapid and inoffensive 
manner in which nitrogenous matter is thus decomposed, 
would have been useful. 
The greatest cause of the debility of these days the in- 
fluence of worry and overwork under the pressure of anxiety 
— cannot be exhibited, and if it could be we doubt if the 
exposure would be sanctioned. 
The entire Exhibition, as a matter of course, has not been 
collected on the principle of displaying all the various causes 
which tend to undermine human'health and vigour, and the 
devices which have been hitherto adopted for their removal. 
It is a promiscuous gathering of whatsoever articles can be 
looked on as connected with health, and its central idea 
seems to be that ol advertising. 
