XVI. O fatal Death that could no longer spare, a tender wife and loving mother dear, Her loss is great to those she left behind, a sincere Christian and a friend, She has gone awhile before a debt to pay Pray God prepare us all for that great Day. XVII. When God cuts off the thread of Life XVIII. This world is a city full of crooked streets XIX. Here lies a woman who lived a sober life It is remarkable that so many quaint and curious epitaphs should be found in one village cemetery. We were told the presiding genius of the place was the blacksmith. He must, however, have simply been the imitator of some preceding genius loci, as many of these memorials showed symptoms of great age. Leaving the sacred spot with many of Harvey's meditations passing through our mind almost as if they were our own, we stepped into a railway carriage and were soon again under the smoke of London. CHAPTER XII. SANITARY SCIENCE-HOUSE AND TOWN SEWERAGE-ITS INFLUENCE ON HEALTH AND LONGEVITY. The present era is remarkable for the commencement of what may be called a new science, which has for its direct object the extension, so far as means may avail, of the average duration of human life. It would be culpable ingratitude not to hail with sanguine hope the energy of the sanitary movement which now pervades the land. It will not, perhaps, be until one or two generations; that much impression will be made by its agency on existing evils. But posterity will, probably, see the public mind submitting to be enlightened and the public will directed by men who have rendered themselves competent to the office. The result will, in all likelihood, be that, with God's blessing on the work, an incalculable amount of physical suffering will be averted, and a large accession of good in all senses of the word, obtained. Each successive generation will occupy a position, as regards health, beyond that of its predecessor, and will leave to its children a still greater immunity from the bodily ills that afflict humanity. The health of communities may be improved, without their having any intelligent apprehension of the reasonableness of the means employed; cities and towns may be drained and ventilated, and both rich and poor participate in the advantage without one of the inhabitants understanding how the benefits were brought about. And on the other hand, influences adverse to health, may rise unsuspected from the soil, or exist in the water drawn from the bowels of the earth, and scatter disease and death broadcast through the community. While in the rural districts visiting and sojourning in many charming looking villages the general and deplorable neglect of sanitary drainage was brought prominently to our attention. No country is blest with a larger number of medical philosophers than England and in the great cities the sanitary authorities are ever on the alert. Yet in many of the towns and villages which we have visited there is no sewer system whatever and in others it is entirely inadequate. The death rate is conse-quently much higher than it would be but for the unnatural condition of living and the tone of health in those who survive lowered to such a point that, if they do not become actual charges on the public, they transmit an inheritance of physical weakness to their posterity. Absolute health cannot be hoped for by any child of Adam.We suffer for the sins of our forefathers and inherit disease and the tendencies to disease which they incurred. Causes of ill health have operated on the bodily constitution from birth. It is not in the power of more than a few, to select the circumstances under which they will live and to avail themselves of all the suggestions which the enlightened physician is now prepared to offer. The mass of mankind will remain subject to poverty. Unhealthy influences surround us unsuspected. The arts and employments life are often such as can only be rendered comparatively uninjurious. Toil of mind and body must be persisted in, although known to be excessive. Sorrow, care and anxiety must be endured by thousands, who are ignorant of the only remedy against them a living union to God, through Christ-and necessity will continue to oppose obstacles, often insurmountable, to what the instructed judgment knows to be expedient. There are few readers who have not been exposed to one or the other of these causes of ill-health, and who will not therefore readily concur, for the most part, in the justness of these observations. Nor is there any reason why they should not be made. They do not weaken the force of the advice, to strive to become as strong and well as possible. The whole of human life, very nearly, is a battle between good and evil; and in the matter of health, most of us have to make the best of what we would rather had been other than it is. Many will wish they had known in their youth what any one may know now, who once sees it to be his duty to try and be well. And many will wish that their parents had been taught that their children had bodies as well as minds, which also needed to be educated. But it is the rule of this life, however numerous the expectations may seem, that whatever is made the object of intelligent pursuit, is more or less completely attained. And the manly, rational determination to be well that we may be use ful, will certainly have its reward. Space will not permit us to enter into a description of the various organs of the human body, and the functions to which they are subservient. Nor can we delay to consider what individual effort is required within the walls of people's houses and in the regulation of their habits in order to secure and retain good health. Common sense and the experience of mankind teach that personal cleanliness, that the function of the skin, with its millions of pores, may not be impeded; that regular exercise, proper nutrition, pure air and water are the conditions on which depend good health. There are also mental and moral causes of disease and ill health worthy of consideration, but it does not belong to our plan to refer more particularly to them at this time. It is enough for us to allude thus generally to these essential matters. We shall confine ourselves herein to a few remarks on the subject of sanitary drainage, and the deplorable results which follow its neglect. The question has interested the writer for many years, and its pressing importance was revived in his mind, as above mentioned, by the almost total neglect of these matters in the lovely villages and towns scattered over England which he visited at the period when these notes were being collected. It is only within a comparatively recent period that the vital importance of the subject has engaged the public attention, though the evils it is intended to mitigate, or altogether avert, are as old as civilization. The ancients fully understood the matter and the great men among the Jews, Greeks and Romans considered personal cleanliness and the surroundings of a man's dwelling, whether this was a tent, a hut or a palace, as of paramount importance. In fact in most Eastern countries, cleanliness makes a part of their religion. The Jewish and Mahometan religions enjoin various bathings, washings and purifications. No doubt the washings may appear whimsical to some, yet few things would tend more to prevent diseases than a proper attention to many of them. Were every person, for example, after visiting the sick, handling a dead body, or touching anything that might convey infection, to wash before he went into company, or sat down to meat, he would run less hazard either of catching the infection himself, or of communicating it to others. By negligence in this matter infectious, diseases are spread in all places where large crowds are brought together in camps, hospitals, cities and towns. The Jews during their encampment in the wilderness, received particular instructions with respect to cleanliness. "Thou shalt have a p'ace also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad. And thou sh It have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back, and cover that which cometh from thee."-Deuteronomy ch. 23, v. 12, 13. Pliny says the common sewers for the conveyance of filth and nastiness from the city of Rome were the greatest of all the public works; and bestows higher encomiums upon Tarquinius, Agrippa and others who made and improved them, than on those who achieved the greatest conquests. And the Emperor Trajan gave particular directions to his proconsul Pliny concerning the making of a common sewer for the health and convenience of a conquered city. It is, indeed, from the ancients we derive maxims to which nothing can be added. From an ancient Greek physi cian we get the cardinal hygienic formula, "pure air, pure water and pure soil." It was a marvel to ancient travelers on what a stupendous scale the works of Egypt were constructed to obtain a supply of sweet water from the Nile, and those of Babylon to get it from the Tigris and Euphrates. The ruins of the ancient aqueducts for supplying Rome with water from the Sabine and Albanian hills form one of the most striking features, (exciting the astonishment of all intelligent travelers,) in the landscapes of the Campagna, at the present day. The stone pavements also on which the ancient sewers were bottomed are still visible. No wanderer among the ghastly exhumations of Pompeii can have failed to observe the careful provision made for securing a supply of water, and must have viewed with astonishment and delight the many baths, some of them unburied in almost perfect condition, as they existed 2,000 years ago. Nor can the traces of the net work of drains which kept the city pure have escaped his attention. During the dark ages when the forests of the North poured forth their hordes, wave after wave, in all the strength and vigor of primitive nature, unlettered and barbarous, the knowledge of sanitary needs perished from men's minds, and the medieval cities were cursed from time to time with plague and pestilence. During this long period of about ten centuries-from A. D. 476 to 1492the death rate was so high from the neglect of the laws of health, that population increased at the rate of something less than one per cent. in ten years.' * A national passion for pure air and general cleanliness is supposed to have been revived in Europe by the Moors, who invaded Spain during the Middle Ages and remained there until about the period of the discovery of America. All thoughtful men, whose attention has been directed to the subject of the public health in cities and towns agree as to the absolute necessity of a thorough system of underground drains.— Consequently, in populous communities like those of London, Paris, New York and other great cities enormous sums have been expended to attain this object. Engineers and architects tell us, if common sense does not, that the waste of such communities cannot be accommodated, or be rendered innocent by any number of cess pools, however numerous or well constructed; that a system of cess pools or open vaults tend to saturate the soil with fetid Around each cess pool, for a considerable distance, the soil is poisoned. "External to this limit," says a high authority matter. *For an intensely interesting account of the Epidemics of the Middle Ages, the reader is referred to Dr. J. F. C Hecker's great work |