Fever has been much less prevalent in Tranent during the present, than for many winters past, and this is to be attributed partly to a soup kitchen which has been instituted in that village, and which has been in operation for about two months (16th March 1839).
The excellent tendency of such establishments must be obvious to all who are at all conversant with the nature of disease, and the animal economy, and it can form no valid objection to that proposition, that fever is still known to have raged where soup kitchens have been established; for, though the pestilence may not have been extinguished, still it may have been abated, and though the malignant character and mortality may not have been reduced, still these excellent institutions may have been the means of preventing their being increased.
Let not, therefore, those who are willing and able to support whatever is calculated to reduce the sufferings and privations of the poor, be driven from extending their support to soup kitchens, because they have only diminished the number of the victims of disease, and made the stage of convalescence more sure and less liable to relapse.
It would indeed be vain to expect, that the distribution of food would act as an entire preventive of fever and disease, which is the result not of scanty food only, but of that and many other circumstances of a very different nature, whose operation, the supply of soup, in any quantity, can go a very short way only, to remedy.
Some of the circumstances which exert the most important influence in the production of pestilential disease, and the measures which are best calculated to counteract their pestiferous tendencies, have now been detailed.
It is hoped the enforcement of the hurtful operation of many circumstances, erroneously thought to be innocent, may lead to their being remedied in future, and it is expected, that if the suggestions which have been thrown out in the latter part of this work, are duly acted upon, or if others of a like nature, which may, at a future period, emanate from another better qualified for the task, should meet with the attention, which this object so well demands, the amount of disease will be diminished, human suffering will be abated, and human life extended nearer to that point of maturity which the Divinity has decreed, and which the organization of the human body proclaims was meant to be attained by one and all of the members of the human family.
By avoiding the causes of disease which have been detailed in this work, and by attending to the rules which have been laid down here and elsewhere for the preservation of health, disease will be greatly abated, but a mighty revolution must be accomplished in the habits, the dispositions, and minds of men, ere mankind will enjoy that course of health, and all that greater freedom from pain and disease, of which their lot is capable:—but far from the consideration of the manifold changes and long course of time which will be required to make a very great improvement in the health of the human race, leading to apathy and inaction, it should serve to stimulate to powerful attempts, and persevering and reiterated efforts for amelioration.
END.
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