The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole
of Calcutta because they wanted pure air. Thus about half the children
born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old,
principally because they want pure air. Humboldt tells of a sailor who
was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His comrades brought him
out of his hold to die in the open air. Instead of dying, he revived,
and eventually got well. He was cured by the pure air.
The most common result of breathing impure air, amongst adults, is
fever. The heaviest municipal tax, said Dr. Southwood Smith, is the
_fever tax_. It is estimated that in Liverpool some seven thousand
persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die.
Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who
generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence
deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very
heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr.
Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that
the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire from
_preventible_ disease, sickness, and death, amounts to not less than
five millions sterling annually. But this is only the physical and
pecuniary loss. The moral loss is infinitely greater.
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