(_c_) The cesspool is still the chief reliance of the world at large. There is nothing to be said in its favor save what may be based on the old adage that "what is out of sight is out of mind." There is everything to be said in its condemnation, whether we regard its contents as a great mass of putrefying and infecting filth, as the source of oozings which travel through crevices of rocks, through layers of gravel, through seams in clay, or through lighter soils into and under cellars and into drinking-water wells and defectively constructed cisterns, or as an ever-active gas-retort supplying the pipes of the house with the foulest products of putrefaction. It is in all respects and under all circumstances a curse, unless placed far away from the possibility of tainting the air we breathe or the soil over which we live, or from which we or others take our drinking-water, and even then it had better be abandoned. The simple drainage of the soil involves a question of the greatest importance. If the ground under the house or about it is at any time, unless perhaps immediately after heavy rains, saturated with moisture, we have to apprehend a condition of insalubrity more or less serious in proportion to the degree of saturation and the degree of foulness with which this is associated. The drainage requirements of land outside of the house are less easily determined, but it requires nothing more than a casual {227} examination of the cellar in ordinarily wet weather to determine whether or not an improvement of its soil-water drainage is necessary. If it is at such times wet, or even persistently damp, thorough drainage is demanded; and it is only necessary to say that this should be secured by some process which can under no circumstances bring the air of the cellar into communication with the air of a sewer or foul drain. * * * * * I have purposely abstained in the foregoing remarks from invading the province of the physician or the physiologist by discussing the influence of bad drainage on the health of those living subject to it. It may safely be assumed that physicians who care enough about the subject to interest themselves in investigating the condition of local or general drainage have convictions concerning it which could not be strengthened by the opinion of one belonging to another profession. The assumption is also confidently made that no intelligent medical man will hesitate for a moment to accept the dictum that the site of the house must be dry, and that it and its neighborhood must be entirely exempt from the influence of foul organic decomposition. {229} GENERAL DISEASES. FROM SPECIAL MORBID AGENTS OPERATING FROM WITHOUT. SIMPLE CONTINUED FEVER. TYPHOID FEVER. TYPHUS FEVER. RELAPSING FEVER. VARIOLA. VACCINIA. VARICELLA. SCARLET FEVER. RUBEOLA. RÖTHELN. MALARIAL FEVERS. PAROTITIS. ERYSIPELAS. YELLOW FEVER. DIPHTHERIA. CHOLERA. PLAGUE.