The one great truth which health-reformers are never weary of proclaiming, because they know it is so true, consists in the declaration that the vast majority of the diseases which affect and afflict humanity are really of preventable nature. Until this truth has been thoroughly driven home, and accepted alike by individuals and nations, no real progress in sanitary science can be expected or attained. To realise fully the immense power which the practical application of this thought places in our hands, we may briefly consider the causes of certain diseases, which in themselves though powerful and widespread, are nevertheless of preventable kind. Amongst these diseases, those, popularly known as infectious fevers, and scientifically as zymotic diseases, stand out most prominently.
We shall hereafter discuss the nature and origin, as far as these have been traced, of those ailments. Suffice it for the present to say, that science has demonstrated in a very clear fashion the possibilities of our escape from those physical terrors by attention to the conditions to which they owe their spread.
Typhoid fever, also known as enteric and gastric fever, is thus known to be produced, and its germs to breed, amongst the insanitary conditions represented by foul drains and collections of filth wherever found. Experience amply proves that by attention to those labours which have for their object the secure trapping of drains, flushing of sewers, and abolition of all filth-heaps, the chances of this fever being produced are greatly decreased. It has also been shown that even where this fever has obtained a hold, attention to drains and like conditions has resulted in the decrease of the epidemic. Again, typhus fever is notoriously a disease affecting the over-crowded, squalid, and miserable slums of our great cities. Unlike typhoid fever, which equally affects the palace of the prince and the cottage of the peasant, typhus fever is rarely found except in the courts and alleys of our great cities. We know that the germs of this fever, which in past days constituted the ‘Plague’ and the ‘Jail Fever’ of John Howard’s time, breed and propagate amongst the foul air which accumulates in the ill-ventilated dwellings of the poor. Attention to ventilation, personal cleanliness, and the removal of all conditions which militate against the ordinary health of crowded populations, remove the liability to epidemics of this fever. Again, the disease known as ague has almost altogether disappeared from this and other countries through the improved drainage of the land; though it still occasionally lingers in the neighbourhood of swamps and in other situations which are wet and damp, and which favour the decay of vegetable matter.
Man holds in his own hands the power both of largely increasing and decreasing his chances of early death, and nowhere is this fact better exemplified than in the lessened mortality which follows even moderate attention to the laws of health; the words of Dr Farre deserve to be emblazoned in every household in respect of their pungent utterance concerning the good which mankind is able to effect by even slight attention to sanitary requirements. ‘The hygienic problem,’ says Dr Farre, ‘is how to free the English people from hereditary disease ... and to develop in the mass the athletical, intellectual, æsthetical, moral, and religious qualities which have already distinguished some of the breed. There is a divine image in the future, to which the nation must aspire. The first step towards it is to improve the health of the present age; and improvement, if as persistently pursued as it is in the cultivation of inferior species, will be felt by their children and their children’s children. A slight development for the better in each generation, implies progress in the geometrical progression which yields results in an indefinite time, that if suddenly manifested would appear miraculous.’
In 1872, Mr Simon told us that the deaths occurring in Great Britain were more numerous by a third than they would have been, had the existing knowledge of disease and its causes been perfectly applied. He added that the number of deaths in England and Wales which might reasonably be ascribed to causes of a truly preventable nature, number about one hundred and twenty thousand. Each of those deaths represents in addition a number of other cases in which the effects of preventable disease were more or less distinctly found. Such an account of a mortality, the greater part of which is unquestionably preventable, may well startle the most phlegmatic amongst us into activity in the direction of health-reform. In order that the nation at large may participate in this all-important work, it is necessary that education in health-science should find a place in the future training of the young as well as in the practice of the old. And if there is one consideration which more than another should be prominently kept in view, it is that which urges that the duty of acquiring information in the art of living healthily and well is an individual duty. It is only through individual effort that anything like national interest in health-science can be fostered. There is no royal road to the art which places length of days within the right hand of a nation, any more than there exists an easy pathway to full and perfect knowledge in any other branch of inquiry. It is the duty of each individual, as a matter of self-interest, if on no higher grounds, to conserve health; and the knowledge which places within the grasp of each man and woman the power of avoiding disease and prolonging life, is one after all which must in time repay a thousandfold the labour expended in its study. It is with a desire of assisting in some measure the advance of this all-important work, that the present series of articles has been undertaken; and we shall endeavour throughout these papers to present to our readers plain, practical, and readily understood details connected with the great principles that regulate the prevention of disease both in the person and in the home.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
CHAPTER XII.—A FAIR ARBITER.
There was a little uneasiness in Madge’s mind regarding the effect her note might have on Mr Hadleigh. She had no doubt that she had given the right answer, and was at rest on that score. But she had divined something of the rich man’s desolation, and she was grieved to be compelled to add in any way to the gloom in which he seemed to live. She wished that she could comfort him: she hoped that there would come a day when she would be able to do so.
It was a relief to her when at length she received this short missive:
‘I am sorry. I know that your refusal is dictated by the conviction that what you are doing is best. I hope you will never have cause to repent that you chose your way instead of mine.’