Rhazes defined it. Ague lurks yet in our own island, and, albeit the
physician is not enriched by it, is in no symptom changed from the
ague that Celsus knew so well. Cholera, in its modern representation
is more terrible a malady than its ancient type, in so far as we have
knowledge of it from ancient learning. And that fearful scourge,
the great plague of Constantinople, the plague of hallucination and
convulsion which raged in the Fifth Century of our era, has in
our time, under the new names of tetanoid fever and cerebro-spinal
meningitis, been met with here and in France, and in Massachusetts
has, in the year 1873, laid 747 victims in the dust.

I must cease these illustrations, though I could extend them fairly
over the whole chapter of disease, past and present. Suffice it if I
have proved the general propositions, that disease is now as it was in
the beginning, except that in some examples of it it is less virulent;
that the science for extinguishing any one disease has yet to
be learned; that, as the bases of disease exist, untouched by
civilisation, so the danger of disease is ever imminent, unless we
specially provide against it; that the development of disease may
occur with original virulence and fatality, and may at any moment be
made active under accidental or systematic ignorance.



A CITY OF HEALTH.


I now come to the design I have in hand. Mr. Chadwick has many
times told us that he could build a city that would give any stated
mortality, from fifty, or any number more, to five, or perhaps some