“The parts visited may be considered a fair specimen of the Edinburgh wynds and closes. They consist of Gillon’s and Gibb’s Closes, Canongate, Blackfriars’ Wynd, Bremot’s and Skinner’s Closes, High Street, and Meal-market Stairs, Cowgate. The drainage of all these places is bad; the sewers are without exception open, and those in Gillon’s and Gibb’s Closes being nearly on a dead level, keep these places constantly in a filthy condition. The poverty of the inhabitants who reside in Gibb’s Close, especially, is also extreme, five out of seven families living in apartments without furniture. The ventilation in general is also bad: several apartments are so close that it is difficult for a person when he first enters them to breathe. In several instances I had to retreat to the door to write down my notes, as I found the stench and close atmosphere produce a sickening sensation which, on one occasion, terminated in vomiting. Although some of the apartments visited were tidy and clean, in general they were the reverse. It is impossible to conceive or describe the filthy condition of some of them. Many of them were very small, and others rather capacious, considering the quantity of furniture they contained. The diseases mentioned were such as to throw the persons affected out of employment. There were many cases of slight and continued ailment of which no notice was taken. No case of rheumatism was taken down unless so severe as to lay the person entirely off work. “About 180 families were visited, but only 117 of them had been one year and upwards in their present dwelling: all the cases of sickness occurred between Martinmas, 1840, and Martinmas, 1841, and none of the patients,” _i. e._ of whom any account was taken, “were under ten years of age,” those under that age being intentionally excluded.