1. That Epidemics are under our own control; we may promote their spread; we may prevent it. We may secure ourselves from them. We have done so. We have banished the most formidable. Those that remain are not so difficult to be conquered as those that have been vanquished. The causes of Typhus are more completely under our control than those of Intermittent. We have banished Intermittent. We may put an end to Typhus. We have actually done so. We have encompassed the Model Dwellings by a barrier which neither typhus, nor even cholera, nor any of the other causes of excessive sickness and premature mortality have been able to pass. To the residents within that barrier the chance of life has been almost doubled; to their children it has been doubled; and compared with some other children of their own class it has been increased fourfold. 2. We see that Epidemics are not made by a Divine law the necessary condition of man’s existence upon earth. The boon of life is not marred with this penalty. The great laws of nature, which are God’s ordinances in their regular course and appointed operation, do form and give off around us, products which are injurious to us; but He has given us senses to perceive them, and reason to devise the means of avoiding them, and epidemics arise and spread because we will not regard the one, nor use the other. 3. We see that there are circumstances which render it doubtful whether civilization has yet attained a point that places it beyond the danger of retrogression. States in some respects of higher civilization than our own have relapsed into barbarism. There is indeed one circumstance which may give us hope; there is one humanizing principle which is now at least recognized and in partial operation, of which there is no trace in any nation of antiquity. I mean the principle of kindness as a governing influence, distinguished from the principle of brute force.