474 OxN THE MEDICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF SINGAPORE. 
man ; he needs neither toil nor spin, and yet like the lilies of the field- 
lie can be fed and clothed. Every cleared spot that is allowed to run 
into jungle, furnishes leaves of various kinds that can be used 
in curries or in stews. The common Ubi kayti gives a delicious ar¬ 
row root and this plant is found as a weed, and used as a fence; in all 
parts the clady (arum esculentuni) that springs up indigenous to our 
marshes and ditches, though possessed of a posionous fluid in its 
leaves aud epidermis of the root, yet furnishes in the latter when 
boiled a wholesome food for man, and fattening nourishment for pigs 
in its leaves. The sea and rivers teem with fish, and the beaches 
with molluscs and edible sea weeds. If any part of a ditch is dug, 
in 3 or 6 months it will be filled with fish, and daily from it you 
will see superannuated women and young children drawing out small 
yet tasty fish to season their dry rice or insipid clady. 
Before a disease can be produced it is necessary to have first an 
exciting cause, such as exposure, miasm or contagion, and second a 
body in an apt or predisposed state to receive the impression of the 
exciting cause, and this aptness may be produced, among other pre¬ 
disposing causes, by bad and low living, or too high living. But of 
the two specified predisposing causes it has been found that poor 
living induces a condition of body much more favourable to receive 
the poison of Malaria and contagion than the opposite state, nay, to 
such an extent does it do so, as in appearance to swamp the exciting 
causes and give rise to the idea that poverty and wretchedness alone 
will induce endemic fever. I cannot think so, or else we would of¬ 
ten in cases of shipwreck, and long voyages, have those exposed to 
such a fate, when extreme want has been for a length of time press¬ 
ing on them, and death in the shape of starvation staring them in 
the face. I say in such cases if poverty alone could create fever, then 
we ought to have it developed to a frightful extent; but such is not 
the case. No, instead of going the full length of Dr. Alison’s views, 
I would stop short with this conviction, that poverty and wretched¬ 
ness predispose the body to receive the impression of the smallest 
taint of contagion and miasm. 
In the first class of my division of the population nine-tenths of 
