The Locality Of Disease

In au interesting article on the areaa cf disease the London Saturday Review reinarks upon the consensus of medical opinión that diseases in geneial have their local habitations - some, like tropical animáis and plants, living only in the tropics; soine, like consumption, gradually spreading over the whole earth, while others, like leprosy and smallpox, are by degrees becoming limited in their distribution, possibly tendIng, it may be, toward extinction. On the other hand, bowever, there are regions to which diseases have never reached, forinstance, on the summits of high rnountain ranges and in the circumpolar snowfields the earth and air nd water are as barren of the microbes Of disease as they are of animal Ufe. The writer in The Review admits that Ín a country like Britain, thickly populated for many centuries, and with the freest circulation of population, it canoot be doubted that every yard of surface contains the germa of the more tommon diseases, and the native of ome newer land brought over to Britain 's shores falls a victim to its plague tricken soil, but by generations of a destructive elimination Britons have become highly resistant to their native diseases, yet not fully so, for cáncer and consuinption, two of the most common ecourges, etill hold powerful sway.