Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
By his social qualities, and his untiring
vigilance, he won the esteem of all in the ship. Our shipmates were
friendly and courteous, and though of sundry nations, and creeds, and
tongues, dwelt together in singular harmony.
Reader, forgive me for the apparent egotism of this journal. I have
wished to give the thousands in our country who have never traversed
the ocean, an idea of ocean life. I could not do so, but by giving free
utterance to the emotions which the varied scenes excited in my own
heart. I have only to add, that if you ever wish to cross the Atlantic,
you will find in the Arctic one of the noblest of ships, and in Capt.
Luce one of the best of commanders.
DROOPING BUDS.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
In Paris, Berlin, Turin, Frankfort, Brussels, and Munich; in Hamburgh,
St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vienna, Prague, Pesth, Copenhagen, Stuttgart,
Grätz, Brünn, Lemberg, and Constantinople, there are hospitals for sick
children. There was not one in all England until the other day.
No hospital for sick children! Does the public know what is implied
in this? Those little graves two or three feet long, which are so
plentiful in our church-yards and our cemeteries--to which, from home,
in absence from the pleasures of society, the thoughts of many a young
mother sadly wander--does the public know that we dig too many of them?
Of this great city of London--which, until a few weeks ago, contained
no hospital wherein to treat and study the diseases of children--more
than a third of the whole population perishes in infancy and childhood.
Twenty-four in a hundred die during the two first years of life;
and, during the next eight years, eleven die out of the remaining
seventy-six.
Our children perish out of our homes: not because there is in them an
inherent dangerous sickness (except in the few cases where they are
born of parents who communicate to children heritable maladies), but
because there is, in respect of their tender lives, a want of sanitary
discipline and a want of medical knowledge. What should we say of a
rose-tree in which one bud out of every three dropped to the soil dead?
We should not say that this was natural to roses; neither is it natural
to men and women that they should see the glaze of death upon so many
of the bright eyes that come to laugh and love among them--or that
they should kiss so many little lips grown cold and still. The vice is
external. We fail to prevent disease; and, in the case of children, to
a much more lamentable extent than is well known, we fail to cure it.
Think of it again. Of all the coffins that are made in London, more
than one in every three is made for a little child: a child that has
not yet two figures to its age. Although science has advanced, although
vaccination has been discovered and brought into general use, although
medical knowledge is tenfold greater than it was fifty years ago,
we still do not gain more than a diminution of two per cent in the
terrible mortality among our children.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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