The habit of indulging to excess in spirituous liquors, when it does not directly induce pestilence, assuredly lays those who are its victims, particularly open to its invasion, and is, therefore, entitled to be regarded as a very important agent in the great tragedy of life which is enacting.
CHAPTER X.
CAUSES OF PESTILENCE CONTINUED—COLD, WANT OF CLOTHING, AND SHELTER—DEPRESSION OF MIND—INFLUENCE OF WEATHER, CLIMATE, HABITS, &C.
Few of the primary causes of pestilence among large bodies of men are so powerful or so extended in the range of their action, as extreme and long continued cold, want of sufficient clothing and shelter, and depression of the mind.
Coincident with many of the epidemics which are wont to prevail in this country, these circumstances are almost, without exception, found to be present; and if they are not admitted to be considered as the sole and exclusive causes of the prevalent disease, it is proved that they are co-agents or adjuvants of the very first importance.
Much of the continued fever which infests the poorer classes of our countrymen, and almost all the pleurisies, colds, and consequent consumptions, which prevail more or less among the various ranks every winter, are in a very great degree dependent on the extreme cold of the season which suddenly sets in, and against which the dress of the inhabitants of these islands is insufficient to provide. The labouring classes suffer much, more particularly from the action of cold and the inclemency of the weather. They are generally very scantily clothed, nay, they are sometimes scarcely covered, and the consequence is, that the cold makes a strong and lasting impression, the circulation on the surface is suddenly impeded, the perspiration is checked, and the whole fabric involuntarily shivers. Now these are the very first symptoms of fever, and unless the constitution is possessed of stamina to remove those symptoms without loss of time, and to establish the circulation in its vigour again upon the surface of the body, that disease, or some other, will undoubtedly be established.
When a body thus affected with cold is placed in a warm situation, there supervenes an excitement or reaction, which is marked by increased force of the circulation, and with redness and heat of the skin, a condition which is often experienced by persons who go immediately to the fire when newly arrived from a journey in the cold. When that reaction ceases, and is followed by a sense of coldness and by shivering, which again is succeeded by reaction, fever, in its proper sense, is established, and will assume a character of violence, lowness, or malignity, according to circumstances.
The clothes, the house, and the diet of the working man, are insufficient to protect him against the action of the cold, and to resist its operation when once it has fastened upon him; and thus it is, that to comparative want and to many privations, there is so often conjoined so much disease.
But it is in vain to expect any other result as long as our most deserving labouring population is worked in an inordinate degree,—so long as they labour beyond what their limited energies will, with impunity, permit—so long as they are often unable to obtain a diet sufficient for the maintenance, even of an idle person, and so long as their very breasts, from very want of clothing, are literally open and exposed to the fiercest blast that blows, and to the most searching and chilling rain that falls from Heaven.
Observe the industrious labourer at his work; behold his powers are taxed to the utmost, his energies, his capabilities, are put upon the stretch, and the entire fabric, God’s most complicated and most delicate creation, is actually labouring and heaving with protracted exertion. His blood distils the dew of labour, and his clothes, such as they are, are moistened with perspiration bursting from a thousand pores.
It frequently happens, that the labour of the poor man being over, sorely fatigued, too exhausted even to enjoy the consciousness that his hour of rest has arrived, with a heavy and unwieldy gait and hanging head, he seeks his comfortless abode, his scanty board, his dreary, dark, scarcely furnished apartment, with its faint and glimmering embers.