those of children—most distinctly; manifesting
its action, first upon the weakest part—as any
part that may have been reduced in tone by
previous disease. There used to be an ill-
drained school at Clarendon Square, Somers
Town, of which Dr. Arnott reported that,
every year, while the nuisance was at its
height, and until it was removed by drainage,
the malaria caused some remarkable form of
disease. In one year, there were extraordinary
nervous affections, rigid spasms, and convulsions
of the limbs, such as occur after taking
poison into the stomach. Another year there
was typhoid fever; and the year after, perhaps
ophthalmia, or obstinate constipation.

As Niger fever does not destroy negroes,
so it would appear that men can become,
in some degree, acclimatised, even to the
emanations from corrupt animal matter. The
man who has spent all his life in a foul
court, acquires a constitution adapted by the
beneficent operations of nature to that
external condition of his life; of his children,
some perish, some survive and become also
acclimatised. But the adaptation cannot be
perfect. In one chance hour of bodily weakness
the poison often takes possession of the
stronghold of the man's life, and he perishes.
Nightmen, and the workmen at the depôt for
animal matter in Paris who have become in
this way acclimatised, even seem to enjoy
exemption from some maladies, by the change
effected in their blood; as vaccination causes
in the blood a mysterious and permanent
alteration which protects us against small-pox.
While the workmen in the Montfauçou are
robust, the inhabitants of houses in its
neighbourhood are tormented with fevers; and,
at the Hospital of St. Louis, half-a-mile distant,
wounds and sores become foul whenever the
wind blows from the direction of the
Montfauçon. Hospital gangrene is more frequent
at St. Louis that at any other hospital in
Paris, though there is none other so airy and
so little crowded.

It may be curious to note the effect of a
London life on birds. In the course of some
inquiries made by certain gentlemen, one of
whom was Professor Owen, a slaughterman
was questioned who was also a bird-fancier.
He had lived in Bear Yard, near Clare
Market, exposed to the combined effluvia
from a slaughter-house and a tripe factory. He
particularly noted, as having a fatal influence
on the birds, the stench raised by boiling down
the fat from the tripe offal. He said " You may
hang the cage out of the garret window in any
house round Bear Yard, and if it be a fresh
bird it will be dead in a week." He had
previously lived, for a time, in the same
neighbourhood in a room over the Portugal Street
burial-ground. That place was equally fatal
to his birds. He had removed to Vere Street,
Clare Market, beyond the smells from those
two places, and he was able to keep his
birds. In town, however, the ordinary singing
birds did not usually live more than
eighteen months; in cages in the country,
they would live nine years or more, on the
same food. When he particularly wished to
preserve a pet bird, he sent it now and then
into the country for a change of air.

Let us take two or three cases, such as
might occur in London to the most prudent
of us; drawing them from a letter addressed
by Mr. Cooper to the Dean of Westminster.
"I was passing the drain grating at the
corner of Union Street, Bond Street," Mr.
Cooper writes, " when I perceived a most faint
and disagreeable smell arising from it. Being
immediately attacked with nausea and an
indescribable sensation of illness, I at once
returned home and drank half a wine-glassful
of brandy. After a short time, the indisposition
appeared to pass away, but the peculiar
smell of the drain still remained in my
nostrils." Again, a stout healthy servant
maid was passing a drain grating at the
corner of Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields,
perceived an unpleasant smell, and became
faint and sick. On getting home she took a
cup of tea, but was soon after seized with
retching. Then she had headache, shivering
fits, pains in her back and limbs, and the next
day was visited by the doctor, and found with
a foul brown tongue, a flushed face, a hot
dry skin, and a pulse running at one hundred
and twenty. The attack quietly subsided.
It is not worth while to multiply such cases;
they occur within the experience of most
Londoners, and relate simply to the effect of
passing the emanation from a foul drain.
What would be the effect of sleeping by it?
Let us see. The following is a short tale of
City life—and death—related on the authority
of Dr. Good.

A family in the City of London had
occupied the same house for many years,
enjoying good health. One day a nursery-
maid was seized with typhus fever. She was
removed from the house, and there came
another in her place. In a short time the
new nursery-maid was attacked by typhus
fever, and was also sent away. A few weeks
afterwards, typhus fever attacked one of the
children. The medical man then saw that
there must be some local cause at work, and
instituted an inquiry. He brought out these
facts:—that the nursery was situated on the
second floor of the house; and that, two or
three weeks before the first case of fever
occurred, a sink had been placed in the
corner of the room for the purpose of saving
labour to the servants. This sink was found
to communicate with the common sewer, and
to be quite open or untrapped. It was
effectually trapped, and there was no more
fever in the house.

We are proving principles which are well
known, but they never can be made too
notorious, or kept too obstinately present to
the general mind, while there is still such great
need as there is in our time to bring them into
common application in our towns and houses.