and other towns south of Baltimore. I then
felt assured that the fuel necessary to co-operate
with this poison did not exist in our
city; that the cloud had passed over us and
left us unharmed."

There was better evidence of the danger
that had been escaped. In the almshouse
two miles out of Baltimore, the poison cloud
did find the co-operation that was absent
in the town. That almshouse is built on
a pleasant healthy site, and is surrounded by
a large farm. It contains six or seven
hundred inmates. On the north side, not far from
the house, is a ravine into which outlet had
been made for all the filth of the establishment.
Every precaution against cholera was
taken in the almshouse, but the filth was left
in the ravine. When the cholera-cloud—if
we may so call it—hung over Baltimore,
there was a slight breeze blowing steadily
from the north. The wind blew over the
ravine against the north face of the alms-
house. Among the persons lodged on
that side of the house, cholera broke out.
Paupers who slept in rooms opening to the
north were attacked, others generally escaped.
There were eight medical students attached
to the establishment. Four who slept "on
the north side of the building were attacked;
the other four, whose rooms were differently
placed, escaped. The manager slept in a
room looking north, and he was seized; his
family slept in rooms looking south, and
they all escaped. At last the bed of the
ravine was cleansed with a stream of water,
and then covered with a thick coat of lime
and earth. The men employed in the work
had cholera. After the drainage was
complete, the number of seizures in one day
fell from eleven to three. In a fortnight,
the epidemic in the almshouse had entirely
ceased.

In the next place we may come nearer
home, and speak of the dreadful visitation
which last year destroyed more than fifteen
hundred of the inhabitants of Newcastle.
The barracks are about three quarters of a
mile from the centre of that town. In a
village two hundred yards from the barracks,
cholera killed one or two persons in almost
every cottage. In the garrison, great activity
was shown by the medical and commanding
officers. Sewers and drains were cleansed,
every kind of filth was removed, and every
spot upon which filth had lain was purified.
The freest possible ventilation was established
in the building, day and night; all overcrowding
was avoided; diet was regulated; and the
men were forbidden to go, after evening roll-
call, into the town, where they would visit
low haunts and infected places. Home amusements
were promoted, and there was a daily
medical inspection of all the five hundred and
nineteen inmates. Among that number of
people there occurred in the barracks four
hundred and fifteen cases of premonitory
diarrhoea; but not one was suffered to develop
into cholera. The garrison came sound out
of the trial.

Other facts stated by Dr. Southwood Smith
in the small twopenny pamphlet to which we
refer, concern the working of the Common
Lodging-Houses Act, by which cleanliness
is enforced and overcrowding is prevented,
in the lodging-houses used by vagrants and
the very poor. Such places, in their old
condition, were always hotbeds of fever. One
such house in the metropolis, would be known
to send to the London Fever Hospital twenty
cases in the course of a few weeks. Now, in
one thousand three hundred and eight such
houses, registered in the Metropolitan Police
district, during the quarter ending last October,
not one case of fever occurred.

In Wolverhampton there are two hundred
lodging-houses, through which it is reported
that, in the last year, half a million of lodgers
passed. The Superintendent of Police testifies
that "there has not been in them a single
case of fever since the Lodging-House Act has
been in force, in July, eighteen hundred and
fifty-two." From Wigan, Morpeth, and
Carlisle, statements have been received of a
simillar description.

Lastly, let us take some facts which
concern private homes. Near the Waterloo
Road, London, there is a very decent square
of thirty-seven houses: built twenty years
ago, and provided with untrapped closets,
cesspools, and brick drains. In the course of
a year, out of the four hundred and thirty
inhabitants of that square, one in five was
sick, and the yearly deaths were at the rate
of fifty-five in a thousand. At the beginning
of eighteen hundred and fifty-two, the drainage
of the whole square was reformed. When
the property was re-examined two or three
months ago, it was found that the rate of
mortality had fallen from fifty-five to thirteen
in the thousand.

Buildings have been erected in various
parts of London by a Metropolitan Association
for Improving the Dwellings of the
industrious Classes. They were not built as a
commercial speculation, but they return a
per centage to the promoters. Ground in
London being expensive, they are five-storied
and let out in flats; the stairs are practically
streets; and each room or set of rooms is not
less private than an independent house. The
rents are level with the rents in dirty streets
which surround Drury Lane. In these buildings
the utmost attention has been paid to
drainage, water supply, lighting, and ventilation.
Out of a whole population of more
than thirteen hundred in such buildings,
which are commonly erected in poor sickly
districts, the annual mortality has been at
the rate of seven in a thousand. In an ill
drained part of Kensington having nearly the
same population, the mortality was at the
rate of forty in a thousand; and in the square
recently spoken of it had been even more
than that. Of the thirteen hundred people