immediate starvation, at least from diseases whose origin can easily be traced to bad or insufficient food. Drunkenness, another great cause of disease and death, is comparatively but little known in rural districts. The village ale-houses are comparatively few, and are frequented by a class that may be considered almost temperate. In our manufacturing towns, in addition to the great number of inns, taverns, hotels, and beerhouses, there are temptations to inebriation which are perfectly unknown in country districts: the glaring gin palace, the casino, and the seductive music hall lead hundreds to the drunkard's doom. Much of the disease and death in our towns must be attributed to this cause. In Sheffield, there are 552 licensed houses, and 743 beershops; and all other large towns are equally well supplied. Drunkenness also leads to immoralities that in the end prostrate the system, and cause a large number of weak and sickly children to be born, only to prematurely die. Another great cause of the excess of deaths in urban districts may be found in the neglect of infant life. Can we wonder that large numbers of infants die in our manufacturing towns, when we see to what a poor and degraded class a large portion of the inhabitants belong? The mothers, being unused to comforts themselves, and enduring, as they do contentedly, numerous privations-surrounded by filth-badly fed-worse housed, and scantily clothed— the infant has to participate in sufferings that must in many cases inevitably result in sickness and death, whilst in the earliest stages of disease it often lacks that medical attention so constantly neces sary. The mother, through being badly fed, has little support for her infant, and too often disease is its only inheritance. Thus, large numbers either die at birth, or before many months old, from inanition, atrophy, convulsions, and debility. Infant life depends more upon the degree of health and comfort enjoyed by the mother than upon anything else. Even at birth, the influence of the mother's condition upon the health of her offspring, is strikingly manifested in the much larger proportion of children born dead, when the parents have been exposed to physical or mental sufferings. In the present state of society, many of the comforts, and even some of the necessaries of life, are beyond the reach of the poorer classes; and this circumstance will be found to operate largely in diminishing the chances of infant life amongst them. In small towns or villages the infant, as a rule, is tenderly cared for; the cottage, though humble, is clean; the mother is usually comparatively strong, and able to support her child; and both she and the father are also generally more free from disease than the inhabitants of large towns. The loss of infant life continues beyond the age of one year, for in our large manufacturing towns one half of the deaths ecc under five years. In 1863, the deaths in Sheffield, from birth to ave years old inclusive, amounted to 61 per 100, and in 1864 the deaths under five are 53 per cent. of the entire deaths. The want of domestic and personal cleanliness also much heightens the death-rate of urban districts. Among a very large number of the residents in our great towns, health is destroyed by this sad want. It is one of the greatest causes of some of our most fatal epidemics; it is often far more influential in the production of fever than defective public sanitary arrangements can be. No laws can wholly remove this evil, though it may be greatly diminished by the operation of the Act empowering Town Councils to erect public baths and wash-houses, by means of a rate. It is a primary duty of every Town Council to erect such places, so that the people may have the means of procuring that ablution which is so essential to health and comfort. Some towns have already taken advantage of the Baths and Wash-houses Act; in Sheffield, however, we have no baths adapted to the working classes. Many other causes, especially long hours in factories, contribute to produce the high death rate in manufacturing towns, and from all of them, Sheffield, like other manufacturing places, suffers to an extent unknown in rural towns and villages. The only just way of comparing urban with rural districts is to classify the various parts of the country, according to their character -rural districts with rural, and all towns in accordance with the trades carried on in them. The elevation of the masses of the people, increasing their intelligence, enabling them to comprehend the necessity for strict and constant attention to the natural laws of health, appears to be the only means of giving even hope for a large increase of the health of the people. It is evident that many of the greatest causes of disease and premature death cannot be removed by legal enactment; but, whilst men eat what the stomach cannot easily digest, disorder the system by drunkenness, labour beyond their strength, and indulge in vicious pleasures, and while poverty, wretchedness, and ignorance prevail, so long will men be prematurely cut down by the unpitying hand of death. To elevate, then, the morality of the people-to diminish their labour and increase their comforts-to inculcate habits of cleanliness-to prevent drunkenness to give to all the necessaries of life, in houses where the sanitary arrangements are good-should be the constant aim of those who desire to benefit their fellow-creatures. The masses of the people do not live in squalid misery from love of it, but from sheer necessity and ignorance. The Familistery, or Workman's Home, in Guise, France. EVERY earnest and well-considered attempt to provide for the working classes healthful and proper homes, is entitled to the recognition and most considerate attention of this Association. How much more so, then, an undertaking which professes, and with evidence of success, to add to this advantage the means of cheap living, of wholesome recreation, and the education of the children; with, further, an interest of 6 per cent. on the capital employed to bring about this most desirable end. How the last result is obtained is not obvious to those who are acquainted with the proceed. ings of societies in this country who have sought to provide for their fellow-countrymen only a portion of these benefits; but such is the assertion of M. Godin-Lemaire, who has built a handsome structure for his workmen and their families, in Guise, near St. Quentin, France. Mr. Tito Pagliardini, a member of the Association, has just now made the Council acquainted with some particulars of this interesting undertaking, and I have been requested to place a brief digest of them before the Health Department. M. Godin-Lemaire is a large manufacturer of stoves and ranges, employing more than 700 men, and has realised a fortune. He desired to let his workpeople participate in his success, and the step he took with that end in view, was the erection of two handsome and substantial structures, to give a strictly private home to each workman, combining with it the nursery, where his wife, while engaged at work, may deposit her infant; the infant-school, where his children, between the ages of two and five, may be gradually prepared for the school, properly so-called, in which their education may be carried on until the age of twelve; fitting them not only for their industrial calling, but for the proper fulfilment of their other social duties; playgrounds, where, by healthful exercise, their physical development shall be ensured without necessarily exposing them to the baneful influences of the street; stores, where provisions and garments may be procured at wholesale prices; reading-rooms, baths, wash-houses, all, in short, that can render home healthy, attractive, and elevating. Another pile to be put up presently, and enclosing, with those already erected, a vast court, will complete the work. ings, externally, are architecturally designed, ornamented with coloured bricks, and made to take a dignified character. The principal block forms the side of a square about 262 feet wide, and has in the centre of it a court about 148 feet by 66 feet, covered with a roof to form a playground for the children, and having special means of ventilation. The gallery-plan, as we term it, with external staircases, is adopted to give independent access to each set of apartments, and seems to be less known in France than here, as it is described as a novelty by those who have given particulars of the Familistery. The galleries are termed by them "hanging streets"-they are formed in this building simply by carrying the joists of each floor about 5 feet beyond the walls-boarding, and a light iron railing at the edge, complete them. It is a medieval plan, exemplified in many of our own ancient inns, and to which we returned some few years ago, when the movement was first made in England towards obtaining decent lodgings for the labouring-classes of the metropolis. As the Association has not yet before them a plan of M. Godin Lemaire's buildings, it will be better not to offer any opinion from |