NECESSITY FOR PURE AIR.
Those of our citizens who were “to the manor born,” and never left their native land, cannot form any idea of the comfort they enjoy as compared with the misery endured from birth to death by thousands of kindred humanity in the other parts of the world. Even in highly cultivated and brilliant England and her dependencies, we find enough to shock the feelings and make us ask ourselves “can such things be?”
In a pamphlet recently given to the world, Dr. Morgan, a Master of Arts, and a prominent member of the British Medical Association, repeats in print a paper which he read before that learned body at Oxford, in August last; and but for which publication we would have been in ignorance of the actual depth of misery to which so many good and faithful subjects of that proud and wealthy monarchy are condemned uncared for and unthought of.
“The author remarks that the housing of the poor, while beset with great difficulties, is most intimately connected with the future prosperity of the great mass of the people. In all our great cities, there are unhealthy quarters, where the death rate is exceptionally high, and the reason of this, after careful inspection of many such places, Dr. Morgan believes is to be found in this statement. Bad air, or too little of it, kills the people.
“Men will grow robust and vigorous, the author remarks, on very poor food, in very dirty cabins, and in very sorry attire, provided they enjoy a pure and bracing atmosphere, and the great physical development of the nations of the Hebrides and the western highlands of Scotland is cited as an example. In striking contrast to this, we find that in the Isle of St. Kilda, a small island, numbering about eighty inhabitants, three out of every five infants born alive are carried off a few days after birth by a convulsive affection allied to tetanus, the difference being apparently due to the huts having no smoke-hole in the thatch, and being rendered impervious to air by double walls filled in with peat and sods, the object of which is to prevent the escape of smoke, and in due time the soot is collected and used as manure.”
Drinking Fountains—This philanthropic movement which offers the grateful cup of Nature’s refreshing beverage to the parched lip of the passenger, is one that takes a high place indeed in the church universal, at whose shrine all bend in unison, and know no discordant thought, but love one another for the love of God.