The Commissioners observe,—“Most of the improvements in public health have been brought about through the experience and science united in our large cities; so much so that now epidemics often come to us from the rural districts. These epidemics are generally much less fatal than formerly, but are still very prevalent even in the wealthiest and the most civilized departments. It would be an important problem to solve, what are the causes which produce these epidemics in the agricultural as well as in the manufacturing counties, as in ancient Normandy and Picardy. One cause is certainly the unhealthiness of the houses. The inhabitants of these districts are, in general, well fed, well clothed, but ill lodged. We are surprised to find in the midst of a fertile plain wide districts covered with luxuriant vegetation, villages buried in the ground, _smothered_ with large trees, and cottages constructed without any art or plan, and almost entirely without windows.” The Commissioners state, further,—“If you wish to have a robust and healthy people, you must have a care for their physical education, their houses, and their modes of living. Do not allow generation after generation to be depressed under the evil effects of recurring epidemics, which must eventually ruin the strongest constitutions, as is seen to be the case in marshy and ill-drained districts, where fevers, _goitres_, and scrofulas constantly prevail.” In another report made on the proceedings of the Conseil de Salubrité, the diseases prevalent amongst the population in the towns is adverted to:—“We must be like the men so well painted by the Psalmist, to reject such evidence—_eyes have they, and see not_. How shall we explain, or rather to what shall we attribute the difference that is remarked between the mortality of one quarter and that of another quarter of the same town; of one street and that of another street of the same quarter or of the same village; or, lastly, the difference that is observed in this respect between the houses of the same street and those houses which are completely isolated? Misery, it is replied to us, is the cause. Yes, without doubt, misery is a powerful cause; but it is so especially when it is driven back into the most insalubrious quarters, streets, and houses; when it lives habitually in the midst of filth and dirt, that is to say, in the midst of an infected atmosphere; and when there is no misery, or when it exists in the same degree in the quarters, in the villages, in the streets, and in the houses with which the comparison is made; and, stronger still, when poverty is met with precisely there where there is the least mortality; in what is to be found the cause of this difference, if it is not in the insalubrity of the dwelling-places?”