Brooklyn Medical Journal

health is everywhere manifest in direct ratio with mental culture. Indifference to life, and indifference to the purity and amenity that sweeten existence, must necessarily go together.

It is frequently remarked that the luxuries of the rich and the miseries of the poor equalize the scale of happiness, by being alike detrimental to health. But if we consider how very small must be the proportion of deaths from actual poverty, as compared with the number from other and removable causes, and apply the same rule to country population, where the proportion of poor is greater, yet healthier, we find in this circumstance an abundance of evidence of other causes than poverty which occasion the excess of mortality in cities.

The worst effect of poverty is that it leads to filth and neglect, and this constitutes an insalubrity which affects the whole community. Personal regulations are neither just nor practicable in carrying out the most effective measures for the promotion of health in populous communities. They undermine self-respect and destroy self-direction. They are inconsistent with independence and the spirit of manliness which civilization in every respect inculcates. But contact with wellcleaned streets and external purity begets a distaste for internal filth and degradation, and there are none so degraded or impure as not to be benefited and elevated by association with cleanliness. Indeed, the only successful barrier to the appalling epidemics of ancient times is to be found in the progress of sanitary reform. By it diseases, which once swept the human race before them, are now either buried in the dust or barricaded in the corrupting dens of lingering barbarism.

Wherever misery is manifest, there always exist at man's disposal means of mitigating or removing it. To find out and apply these means is advancement in civilization. And could sanitary rules be made to bear equally, the list of diseases capable of being dispelled by civilization would be much increased.

Ordinary occupations rarely have anything in them incompatible with health. And disease and short life, when associated with special pursuits, are usually consequent on the omission of precautionary measures in the removal of pernicious influences. So that these influences form no valid argument against the proper exercise of such pursuits.

The safety-lamp of Sir Humphrey Davy protects the miner from the terrible choke-damp, which, if neglected, is nearly always followed by fatal consequences; while the habitual neglect of a slower poison under other circumstances is attended with equally fatal though less sudden results. When an evil agency which could be abolished is permitted to work on the human race at large, it is difficult to perceive into how many channels its deleterious current may run. The pecuniary cost of

pernicious influences may be measured by the charges attendant on the duration of life, and the reduction of the period of working ability, and the cost will also include much of the attendant yice and crime as well as the destitution which comes within the province of pauper support. It is in this way that burdens are created and costs entailed upon the industrious survivors of every community in direct ratio with a high mortality.

The miserable, degraded, and sickly portion of every community is weak in proportion as the highly cultivated and healthy portion is strong. To assist the weak in applying such sanitary measures as will protect mankind at large from the injuries which each, in a narrowminded selfishness, would inflict on his neighbor, is therefore both rational and right.

For these purposes Sanitary Associations have been instituted.

These are societies of recent formation, chiefly in England. They have for their objects the removal of those evils which occasion premature death. They work with natural causes; they profess to introduce no artificial elements; they look to the capacities which the Creator has given to the human frame to exist and act; and they desire full freedom to be given to these powers by the removal of whatever may tend to impair the natural endowments of Man.

USES OF A SANITARY ASSOCIATION IN BROOKLYN.

Have we not necessity for, are we not called upon, as citizens of Brooklyn, by our very proximity to the most deadly civilized city in the world, to constitute ourselves into a sanitary association? But proximity is not all. It is not necessary for me, however, to specify the evils lying at our own doors. He who runs may read. Every week we are reminded of the poison we are tolerating, by the continual droppings of life-buds at our feet. Are not these sins of omission as great against us as are those sins of commission by the untutored savages of the forest? Nor is this all. Our Health Officer informs us, last year, 179 persons died of small-pox! Every one of which deaths could have been prevented by a well-organized sanitary association. And it is not too much to assert that of the whole 6,499 deaths reported as occurring in Brooklyn during the year 1858, more than half of them were of diseases wholly preventable by proper sanitary measures.

The organization of a Sanitary Association in Brooklyn, at this time, is singularly appropriate. We are just on the eve of receiving a most potent means for the purposes of sanitary reform-an abundant supply of pure water. But a necessity to this is the upheaving of streets, numberless stagnant cess-pools and cisterns-all of which have most impor

tant bearings on the objects of such an association, and, most of all, the establishment of a system of sewerage.

Cognizance of these measures, their benefits and their dangers accordingly as they are well or ill disposed of, are matters of the most vital importance. Nor should old abuses and impositions be neglected. Supervisors can inform us of thousands of dollars uselessly spent, in the formalities of coroners' inquests over subjects of still-birth and of findings of "no evidence of poison" where no analysis has been made, and other nearly allied absurdities. Our Dispensary officers can inform us of bank depositors availing themselves of the subscriptions of the charitable. But the evils are numberless. Let us constitute ourselves into a voluntary association, which shall have for its object the noblest work of the Christian philanthropist—that of alleviating human misery.

Let us look at this matter minutely, and reflect that at this very hour a death the cause of which it may have been in our power to prevent -is carrying desolation to the hearts of a whole family-that for every two hours, this night, some one of the households of Brooklyn is visited by death-aye, that for every two hours this year, and the last, some one has died in our midst, and that it is in our power to lessen the frequency of these deaths at least one-half.

There are noble philanthropists in New York who have shouldered the responsibility of confessing their neglect of the great stream of death and misery which has at length well-nigh deluged the whole city with rottenness. There are many there now who are thoroughly alive to the danger of this bulk of dark waters. The New York Sanitary Association is the first fruit of their efforts.

Already the current is stayed in its course, and I venture to predict that these champions of health will achieve a reform which will be alike in its effects on the morals and the health of the community. And the New York Sanitary Association will not only be first in origin in America, but first in the amount of good accomplished. Yet we propose, to-night, to enter the lists for the championship. The prize is an awful one it involves the life or death of more than ten per cent. of our population annually.

COMMITTEE TO PREPARE CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS.

A motion having been adopted that a committee of five be raised who should, at a future meeting, submit a constitution and by-laws for the government of the Association, the chair designated for that purpose: A. N. Bell, M.D., John Greenwood, Esq., H. J. Cullen, M.D., J. B. Jones, M. D., and Mr. Brownson. The Association then adjourned, to meet on Friday, 17th inst., at the Health Office, City Hall.

A METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY.

An effort has been made in New York City to form a meteorological society, with what success we do not know. It would seem, however, that there are enough persons interested in the subject to insure the formation of a valuable organization, particularly if the effort was extended to adjoining cities.

It is believed that in addition to the few professional meteorologists now in and near the metropolis there are also many other men, physicians, civil engineers, teachers, lawyers, farmers, journalists, public officials, instrument makers and others, who are giving more or less attention to weather-science because of the relations existing between some branch thereof and their own several vocations. And it is not unreasonable to think that most, if not all, of this number would find it advantageous to affiliate for purposes of study and discussion.

The establishment of a library, to include standard books on meteorology, periodicals and reports devoted to kindred subjects, charts and other helps to investigatiou, would be one of the most important and useful features of such a scheme. Essays from members or outside experts, either upon current or newly-proposed theories in weather-science, or upon more practical matters like the relations of cold waves and humidity to health, or of rainfall to crops, forests to freshets, or floods and gales to some branch of engineering, would be sought and made the basis of discussion. No doubt, the more accomplished scholars among the members would derive some benefit from these facilities and the papers of their associates, while obvious advantages would accrue to those who were less versed in the mysteries of this infant science. Not least among the good results likely to proceed from the proposed organization would be the suppression or depreciation of "cranks," and the education of the public in correct notions and terminology. Unlike the excellent State Weather Services now in operation in twenty or thirty States of this country, the proposed association should be composed of persons who are, even if on a very modest scale, investigators rather than mere observers, and would not contemplate the issue of forecasts. It would more nearly resemble, in aim, the New England, Royal and Scottish Meteorological Societies, although on a smaller scale. Purely local at first, it might in time become the nucleus of a State or National association of dignity, repute and use.