is the recognition of the principle that when large numbers are congregated together in communities, the duty of preventing injury from this aggregation rests on the community; and if this principle is duly acted on, if in all aggregations of population free circulation of air is encouraged by preventing the crowding together of buildings; if refuse is immediately disposed of, so as to cause no injury to any one; if pure water be provided; if we isolate infectious diseases; and above all, if we are fortunate enough to retain the blessing of cheap food and clothing, we shall not transmit to our posterity a similar legacy of misery to that which we inherited.

SANITARY IMPROVEMENT OF THE ARMY AND OF INDIA.

In this brief summary I have only been able to sketch out the sanitary conditions of the civil population in this island. But that sketch leaves untouched some of the most important features in the progress of sanitation during the Queen's reign.

In the army, between 1844 and 1854, the death-rate of the British soldiers, who were selected lives, was 17 or 18 per 1000 during peace at home stations, as compared with a calculated death-rate of 8 per 1000 of the lives of the civil population at similar ages. After the Crimean War the exertions of Sidney Herbert, Miss Florence Nightingale, Dr. Sutherland, and others, led to great improvements in the lodging, food, dress, and general management of the soldier, and during 1885 the army death-rate at home stations did not exceed 5 per 1000; this means the annual saving in peace time of three whole regiments. Considering that the soldier's life is carefully selected, and that his period of service is shortened, this death-rate in peace time is still too high.

In the British army in India, before the Crimean War, a death-rate prevailed of 60 and 70 per 1000-that is to say, that with an army of 60,000 men, between 3000 and 4000 men had to be sent out yearly in peace time to replace the loss. This, by means of improved attention to the soldiers' lodging, clothing, food, and other matters, has been reduced to between 15 and 17 per 1000. Moreover, the inquiry into the health and the condition of the British army in India led to a consideration of the defective sanitary condition of the civil

population, and was followed by the creation of a sanitary organization throughout the Queen's empire in India, which is leading to a vast improvement in the sanitary condition of the native population.

CONCLUSION.

The changes which have taken place in the last fifty years in every branch of life, social, political, and commercial, will make the reign of Queen Victoria ever stand out as an important historical epoch. In respect of sanitation, she found that the old systems, designed to regulate the sanitary condition of the people in simpler times for a small population, no longer met the exigencies of our crowded cities and more complicated habits of life.

If time had permitted, I should have liked to dwell on the economic and social considerations involved in the saving of life which has thus been effected in every branch of the population, and in every part of the Queen's empire. It implies the diminution of disease, with its consequent pain and misery, and a raised physical condition of the people. It has carried with it a higher social standard and improved morality, and has diffused a large measure of happiness throughout the nation.

DRY HEAT AND STEAM AS DISINFECTANTS.-At the request of the German Government, Koch and Wolfhurzel experimented upon the comparative disinfecting value of dry heat and steam. They reported that, by the direct application of steam at 212° Fahrenheit for from five to ten minutes, even the virulence of dried anthrax blood was destroyed. Earth-spores, which have a reputation for tenacity of life at high temperatures beyond all others, were devitalized by fifteen minutes' exposure to steam, while they resisted the action of dry heat for three or four hours at 302° Fahrenheit.

Dr. Russell, medical officer of Glasgow, says that, during the last ten years, over a million of articles (from persons affected with every kind of contagion known in this country) have passed through the Glasgow laundry, and that he has never known a case of interchanged disease, although the women engaged in the laundry have occasionally suffered from handling the linen before the boiling process.-Dr. Ellister, in British Medical Journal.

THE RELATIONS OF TEMPERATURE TO
HEALTH IN DWELLING-HOUSES.*

By D. BENJAMIN, M.D., Camden, N. J.

WHAT is generally called a cold is always produced by some change of temperature, with or without moisture, to which a part or the whole of the person has been exposed. In most cases the change must be from a given temperature to a lower one in order to produce a cold. One is more apt to take cold if a part and not the entire body be exposed to a low temperature. Dampness adds greatly to the power of a low temperature to produce a cold.

A cold is a disturbance of the circulation of the blood, whereby a part of the body has too little blood in it, and, therefore, some other part has too much.

The part that has too much is said to be congested, and if the congestion is not promptly relieved by treatment inflammation is sure to follow. If in the throat, croup; lungs, pneumonia; bladder, cystitis, etc.

The human flesh is elastic and contractile, and, therefore, when cold is applied to a part it contracts, holding much less blood; consequently, some other part must contain more than it should. Moreover, all vital action goes on more slowly in a low than in a high temperature, so that by cooling a part overmuch its nerve energy and vital force are greatly affected, causing delayed and dangerous reaction, or actual destruction of a part; while the undue blood in some other part of the body lights up inflammation that would not have been called into existence without this stimulus.

Cold applied to the skin generally produces congestion of the mucous membranes, because of their similarity of construction, nerve supply, and continuity of structure to the skin.

* Revised from Some Observations on the Relation of Dwelling-House Windows and Temperatures to Acute Inflammatory Diseases," in the Medical Bulletin, May, 1886.

The most healthful temperature for the human body to live in is about 70° Fahr.

In a slowly moving atmosphere at 70° Fahr. a person cannot take cold; but a change of 10° Fahr., especially if it is sudden, is often sufficient to cause one to take cold.

The foregoing are undeniable truths, based on physiology, chemistry, and physics. Their importance and the practical application of them, especially in the prevention and treatment of diseases of the respiratory organs, we will now consider.

A few years ago I began making some observations and experiments on the circulation and temperature of air in rooms, with results which appear to me to be of practical importance. The conditions of temperature and circulation of air vary greatly in rooms, especially those that are in use.

Fig. I gives results of experiments in a room ten feet high, twelve feet wide, and

twenty feet long, with a good stove and steady fire. Three-story brick house, south front, twelve rooms, warm cellar. Out-door temperature 24° Fahr. By examination of Fig. 1, it will be seen that when the centre of a room is 78° Fahr., four feet from the window it may be 70° Fahr., one foot from win

dow 54° Fahr., and at window 40° Fahr. (no doors or windows having been opened for thirty min

utes), a difference in the room of 38° Fahr.

In Fig. 2, a vertical section of same room, it will be seen that while the head is in 75° Fahr. the feet may be in 50° Fahr. What must be the effect on a person who removes his warm boots and wears slippers, or the one that lies down to sleep on such a floor? Many do these very things, however. Fig. 3 shows an every-day occurrence among thousands,

yes, millions of people. A child three or four years old, from playing near a stove or on a nurse's lap, in a temperature of 70° or 80° Fahr., perhaps in a sweat, goes to a window and stands, without any change of clothing or protection, for half an hour or more, in a temperature anywhere from 30° to 55° Fahr. How such a thing can occur without resulting in croup or pneumonia must be marvellous to any one who studies the subject even casually.

In many instances there is a small crack or opening either under the sash or at the side, and almost always at the junction of the upper and lower sash, where a stream of air is passing into the room nearly as cold as the outside air, though it be below zero. Cold air at a high speed striking a child directly on bare throat or breast can seldom fail to produce some dreadful disease.

On a very cold day, in some of the wooden houses inhabited by poor people with many children and little time to look after them, children may often be found sitting on the floor in a temperature of 38° Fahr., or standing with nose against window-pane at 20° Fahr., when the mother is washing or ironing in 65° Fahr. These people generally have but one fire in the house, and that in a cook-stove, which cannot heat. the floor at all, while cold drafts come from every other room, and especially from the stairway. In churches and theatres the galleries will be 85° to 90° when the floor is 70° Fahr.; then the opening of a door or window is very injurious, and going out into the air at 10° or 20° Fahr. also causes a dangerous strain on the system.

In view of the principle already given, it seems to me that this is a striking state of affairs, and perhaps no principles of hygiene are so grossly violated as these. No wonder that the death list in Philadelphia alone in a single year reaches the dreadful sum of one thousand from pneumonia and about four hundred from croup (preventable diseases in most cases). It is also somewhat remarkable that the subject has not before been written up in medical works. The thermometry of