But it exercises
discrimination in its attacks, It will visit one town or village and
leave many others in the vicinity untouched. Similarly it will attack
one house and leave another. But it has been generally found that
the attacked house or village held out special invitation from its
insanitary condition. The same houses or the same localities will be
revisited in recurring epidemics, because the conditions remain the
same; remove those conditions, and at the next recurrence the locality
will escape. At Malta it was found that the same localities and houses
which yielded the majority of plague deaths there in 1813 yielded the
majority of the deaths in the cholera epidemics of 1839 and 1867, and
that in the intervals the same localities yielded the majority of cases
of small-pox, fever, and of an anthrax, a very special eruptive epidemic
attended by carbuncles. Hence, while we are unable either to account
for the cause or to prevent the periodic recurrence of epidemics, the
sanitarian has learnt that it is possible to mitigate the severity of
the visit; and that, whether these evils arise from the occult causes
to which I have alluded, or from other causes, pure air and pure
water afford almost absolute safeguards against most forms of zymotic
diseases.
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