d in ice-cold water which it would
be thought sacrilege to warm; children of four and five running about on
a bitter day in the fall of the year with no clothing but a light linen
shirt; cholera-stricken peasants refusing the medicines offered them;
and women employed in hard field-labor three days after their
confinement,--can easily credit the statement, frightful as it is, that
at least fifty, and in some cases eighty-three, per cent. of the
children born in the provinces die in their infancy, and that the
population of certain districts has diminished fully one-third during
the past generation.

D.K.

SOCIETIES OF HEALTH.

That an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure has passed into a
proverb, and yet there is no doubt that the majority of the cases of
sickness, general ill health and debility, especially with women, arise
from a disregard of the simplest rules for health. But how shall the
people learn these rules unless they are taught them? and who so well
fitted to teach them as the doctors?

Does any one say that it is against the interest of the doctors to
prevent disease? The reply would be that such a conception of the
medical profession is a very low one; for doctors were men before they
acquired their profession, and there is little doubt that they would
find their profession a much more agreeable, and possibly a more
profitable, one if, as in China, they were paid for keeping their
patients well, instead of for curing, or trying to cure, them when they
are sick.

At least such a conception of his office has occurred to Dr. George
Dutton of Springfield, Mass., and he has been engaged for some years in
attempting to have the idea practically introduced in that city. About
two years ago he started a Society of Health there with a few members.
The members, who have now reached about fifty, pay him two dollars each
a year for advice and one dollar for the expenses of the society.
Whenever they need his services they call upon him and get his advice
gratis, or he calls upon them at their homes for half price. But this is
the smallest part of the innovation. By the agreement Dr. Dutton binds
himself to give them a free lecture once a month upon matters of hygiene
and cognate subjects, either serving as lecturer himself or obtaining
the services of some competent person for the same duty. When the
society was first formed it was made a part of the agreement that the
members should annuall