and the Parisian fauxbourgs. Such demoralization follows always upon the heels of pestilence and famine.

It would be Utopian to imagine that any effort can altogether preclude, among men constituted as they are, the infliction of this curse of poverty upon the improvident and imbecile. But it is possible to diminish the number of its victims, and to evade the diffusion of its malignant influence beyond the circle of its inevitable presence. Policy, as loudly as humanity, demands that this should be earnestly attempted. The rich man, in his luxurious cabin, may be infected by the ship fever of the miserable emigrant in his crowded steerage. Pent up within the thronged area of a great city, he will likewise suffer from typhus, generated in the lanes and alleys, hovels and cellars, among which he must reside, or whose pestilential breath he must inhale in passing. The citizen who will not provide for the enforced purification of the streets and houses about him may soon become the victim of the miasms eliminated there; although his own proud palace may seem, by its admirable architecture and its comfortable appointments, elevated far above the sources of such miasms. We are linked inseparately together, the rich and the poor, the lofty and the low. Our voyage across the great ocean of existence must be made in one common bark, wafted by the same favorable breezes, tossed by the same rough billows, and wrecked in the same rude tempests. "Nothing human can be foreign from us," whether we regard the affairs of our race

with the genial sentiment of the Roman dramatist, or look upon them with the cold and calculating eye of the selfish voluptuary.

The hygienic office of government is twofold: it must regulate the external relations of the community with one strong arm, while with the other it directs minutely the internal police. I will not now enter upon the debatable questions of contagion and infection; it will suffice here to point out a course of precaution which will scarcely offend any reasonable philanthropist.

1. There are certain diseases which all allow to be communicable, importable, transmissible, contagious, or infectious. It is clearly not only the right, but the duty, of every community to repel the entrance of these, in all known or suspected modes of introduction. The ability to effect this most desirable purpose may, nay, it must, be imperfect; yet it should be exerted to the utmost.

2. There are other diseases of which it is doubtful whether they possess this property of transmissibleness, whether they can be subjects of communication from one person or place to another. Observation or experiment will show, in reference to these, that one of two things is true or probable. Their foci of prevalence being known, intercourse therewith will present the coincidence of their appearance in other places, or it will not. The fact of such coincidence being once noted, the duty of the authorities is palpable; while the question is unsettled, they should lean to the side of general safety. Let it be

left to physicians, whose proneness to differ among themselves is proverbial, and perhaps praiseworthy-let it be left to them to split hairs in the tempest of wordy clamor, drawing vague lines between infection and true contagion; between atmospheres inquinated by foreign intermixtures, and poisoned by exhaled viruses; between the personal importation of sick bodies, and the concentrated influence of rank fomites: but let the whole profession unite, pendente lité, in advising measures of the surest precaution. Let them all hold in warning remembrance the changes of opinion which on this subject the most distinguished controversialists have acknowledged.

3. The quarantine established should be organized in precise relevancy to the nature of the case to which it is applied. General and indirect measures of prevention are both unsatisfactory and oppressive. The restrictions imposed on commerce in this way are hard to bear, and will scarcely be submitted to at all, unless so arranged as to commend themselves openly to reason and justice. In reference to persons, let us carefully ascertain the "latent period" of every form of contagious pestilence, and let the traveler be detained only so long as will surely pass beyond this period. The present duration which gives name to the law is unnecessarily tedious and injurious. If an attack of plague or cholera develop itself always within eight days after exposure to its source, it will be sufficient to sequester a passenger from a foul port twelve,

fourteen, or at most sixteen days, when, if unattacked, he may be admitted; yet, after personal purification, rigidly enforced; for a man may carry about him, as at the celebrated Black Assizes at Oxford, and elsewhere, a contagious influence that may not affect himself. As to other fomites, ascertain and apply all efficient means of disinfecting them, and let the foul vessel be well and thoroughly cleansed.

4. Such quarantine should be established upon the most liberal principles. The unfortunate subjects of restraint, sacrifices for the time to the public safety, should be treated with all compatible kindness; if sick, most amply supplied with every solace, and all possible means of restoration; if in health, offered every hospitable entertainment that civilization and refinement can bestow. Let no niggardly economy prevail. While the poorest should be placed in comfort and ease, those to whom custom has made luxuries necessary should be permitted, and aided, indeed, to procure all that they may require.

If these measures should be objected to as unduly expensive and burdensome upon any community, let the objector take the trouble to calculate and compare the pecuniary injury, the evil, as expressed arithmetically in pounds, shillings, and pence, of the epidemic presence of any one pestilence in a commercial city, leaving out of consideration the anguish of sickness and loss of life; let him contemplate the distraction, the dispersion of the population, the suspension of business, its slow and fear

ful revival, the depreciation of property. Look at New Orleans-among all the cities of the world, the most favorably situated for commerce, with the exception only of New York (if even New York be excepted)—and ask why her population has not increased for the last ten years, or has increased so slowly, while the wealth of the West, and of this vast continent, has been poured profusely into her lap, through the father of rivers, in vain. What expenditure efficient for the removal of her insalubrity, or her imputed insalubrity, would not have been wisely devoted to that purpose? Who can doubt the immediate and prodigious expansion of her wealth and population, this burden being once taken from her?

The same remarks will apply equally to the last remaining point upon which I am to touch. Among the internal sources of disease in every community to which hygienic regulations must be directed, I specify, first and chiefly, an undue density of population. I lay down the rule, as established beyond all doubt or denial, that the most crowded cities are in direct ratio the most sickly and vicious, and that the most crowded parts of a city are most unfriendly to life, to health, and to morals. Thus, take examples: Liverpool gives the ratio of 460,000 human beings collected upon a square mile, one of its sections of 105 square yards holding a population of 12,000. The average age at death is but seventeen years; a death occurs annually in every twenty-eight and three-fourths; its entire population spreading at the rate