It is comprised in the words--wherever there is dirt, get
rid of it instantly; and with cleanliness let there be a copious supply
of pure water and of pure air for the purposes of human health.
Take, for instance, an unhealthy street, or block of streets, in a large
town. There you find typhus fever constantly present. Cleanse and sewer
the street; supply it with pure air and pure water, and fever is
forthwith banished. Is not this a much more satisfactory result than the
application of drugs? Fifty thousand persons, says Mr. Lee, annually
fall victims to typhus fever in Great Britain, originated by causes
which are preventible. The result is the same as if these fifty thousand
persons were annually taken out of their wretched dwellings, and put to
death! We are shocked by the news of a murder--by the loss of a single
life by physical causes! And yet we hear, almost without a shudder, the
reiterated statement of the loss of tens of thousands of lives yearly
from physical causes in daily operation. The annual slaughter from
preventible causes of typhus fever is double the amount of what was
suffered by the allied armies at the battle of Waterloo! By neglect of
the ascertained conditions of healthful living, the great mass of the
people lose nearly half the natural period of their lives. "Typhus,"
says a medical officer, "is a curse which man inflicts upon himself by
the neglect of sanitary arrangements.
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