arities) would pronounce to be the most
healthy village in England, is in fact the most unhealthy. From its
commanding position (being situated upon a high hill) it has an
appearance of health and cheerfulness which delights the eye of the
traveller, who commands a view of it from the Great Western road; but
this impression is immediately removed on entering at any point of
the town. The filth, the dilapidated buildings, the squalid
appearance of the majority of the lower orders, have a sickening
effect upon the stranger who first visits this place. During three
years' attendance on the poor of this district, I have never known
the small pox, scarlatina, or the typhus fever to be absent. The
situation is damp, and the buildings unhealthy, and the inhabitants
themselves inclined to be of dirty habits. There is also a great
want of drainage."

Mr. John Fox, the medical officer of the Cerne Union, Dorsetshire, gives
the following evidence:

"In many of the cottages, where synochus prevailed, the beds stood on
the ground-floor, which was damp three parts of the year; scarcely
one had a fire place in the bed-room, and one had a single small pane
of glass stuck in the mud wall as its only window, with a large heap
of wet and dirty potatoes in one corner. Persons living in such
cottages are generally very poor, very dirty, and usually in rags;
living almost wholly on bread and potatoes, scarcely ever tasting
animal food, and consequently highly susceptible of disease and very
unable to contend with it. I am quite sure if such persons were
placed in good, comfortable, clean cottages, the improvement in
themselves and children would soon be visible, and the exceptions
would only be found in a few of the poorest and most wretched, who
perhaps had been born in a mud hovel, and had lived in one the first
thirty years of their lives."

Mr. James Gane, the medical officer of the Uxbridge Union, says,

"I attribute the prevalence of diseases of an epidemic character,
which exists so much more among the poor than among the rich, to be,
from the want of better accommodation as residence, (their dwellings
instead of being built of solid materials are complete shells of mud
on a spot of waste land the most swampy in the parish; this is to be
met with almost everywhere in rural districts) to the want