SANITARY SERMONS.
ost of our contemporaries have lately improved an alarming occasion with many monitory observations on typhoid fever. The whole of these, however, reducible into a few words, may be pretty well summed up in the caution,—Look to your drains. In addition, Dr. Punch begs to offer a piece of advice gratis to all persons in possession of his universal remedy, price 3d., 4d. stamped, to counterfeit which is piracy. Look to yourselves.
Pestiferous as is the atmosphere of sewers, not only do rats live, but labourers work in it, the former wholly, the latter for most part with impunity. The rodents get acclimatised, unless it be that instinct impels them to take some sort of vegetable or other preventive of zymotic and mephitic diseases. As for the working-men, they smoke pipes of tobacco almost to a man, and as generally prescribe for and administer to themselves alcohol in some one or other of its forms, commonly that of something short, which, if asked to give it a name, we will call gin, or euphemistically, Old Tom, not to say, dyslogistically, blue ruin, for the useless sake of pleasing the United Kingdom Alliance; those conspirators against the potatory liberty of the subject who hate us youth, and specially abhor Punch. The gin-drinking, prevalent among the population of the slums, comes of a sense which is medicinal, and the medicine would, in effect, be altogether salutary but for the tendency of people to take it in over-doses.
Everybody knows how continually medical men are exposed to all manner of contagion, and how very seldom they catch any disease. They, it is true, are not in the habit of asking particularly for gin on coming out of a sick-room: but they are accustomed to take, or do, whatsoever may be requisite to maintain the bodily conditions which resist or expel poisonous or morbid effluvia.
Look to your drains, by all means; but look also to the natural gates and alleys of the body—keep them clear, and permeable, and pervious. By what means? Therein the patient may minister to himself if he can, or else should inquire of his doctor, who will let him know. There is, however, a popular panacea which he will find invariably efficacious. The prophylactic as well as therapeutic virtues of Punch, of Punch's Pocket-Book, and Punch's Almanack, are so universally known and so deservedly celebrated that any recommendation beyond the merest reference to those powerful tonic, stimulant, and antiseptic publications would be superfluous puffery. How much caution soever the Faculty may recommend in prescribing alcohol in whatsoever form, they are of unanimous opinion that nobody need hesitate to give or take any quantity of Punch.