This neglect of the conditions of daily health is a frightfully costly thing.  It costs the rich a great deal of money in the shape of poor-rates, for the support of widows made husbandless, and children made fatherless, by typhus.  It costs them also a great deal in disease; for the fever often spreads from the dwellings of the poor into the homes of the rich, and carries away father, mother, or children.  It costs a great deal in subscriptions to maintain dispensaries, infirmaries, houses of recovery, and asylums for the destitute.  It costs the poor still more; it costs them their health, which is their only capital.  In this is invested their all:  if they lose it, their docket is struck, and they are bankrupt.  How frightful is the neglect, whether it be on the part of society or of individuals, which robs the poor man of his health, and makes his life a daily death!

Why, then, is not sanitary science universally adopted and enforced?  We fear it is mainly through indifference and laziness.  The local authorities—­municipalities and boards of guardians—­are so many Mrs. Maclartys in their way.  Like that dirty matron, they “canna be fashed.”  To remove the materials of disease requires industry, constant attention, and—­what is far more serious—­increased rates.  The foul interests hold their ground, and bid defiance to the attacks made upon them.  Things did very well, they say, in “the good old times,”—­why should they not do so now?  When typhus or cholera breaks out, they tell us that Nobody is to blame.

That terrible Nobody!  How much he has to answer for.  More mischief is done by Nobody than by all the world besides.  Nobody adulterates our food.  Nobody poisons us with bad drink.  Nobody supplies us with foul water.  Nobody spreads fever in blind alleys and unswept lanes.  Nobody leaves towns undrained.  Nobody fills gaols, penitentiaries, and convict stations.  Nobody makes poachers, thieves, and drunkards.

Nobody has a theory too—­a dreadful theory.  It is embodied in two words—­Laissez faire—­Let alone.  When people are poisoned by plaster of Paris mixed with flour, “Let alone” is the remedy.  When Cocculus indicus is used instead of hops, and men die prematurely, it is easy to say, “Nobody did it.”  Let those who can, find out when they are cheated:  Caveat emptor.  When people live in foul dwellings, let them alone.  Let wretchedness do its work; do not interfere with death.

“It matters nothing to me,” said a rich man who heard of a poor woman and her sick child being driven forth from a town for begging.  The workhouse authorities would have nothing to do with her, and sent her away.  But the poor woman went and sat down with her child at the rich man’s door; the child died there; the contagion of typhus was wafted into the gilded saloon and the luxurious bed-chamber and the rich man’s child fell a victim to the disease.