Consumption A Disease Of Indoor Lire

Anaong the nativos of Seuegambia pulmonnry affectious are not only nearly, but absolutely, unknown; yet a single year passeil in the overcrowded manpens and stoerage-hells of the slavetrader often sufficed to develop the disease in that most virulent form known as galloping consumption; and tlie brutal planters of the Spanish Antilles made a rule of never buying an imported negro before they had " tested his wind," i. e., trotted him np-hill and wutched Jiis respirations. If he proved to be "a roarer," as turf men term it, they knew that the dnngeon had done its work and diucounted his value accordingly. "If a perfectly sound man is imprisoned for lif'e," saya Baron d'Arblay, the Belgian philanthropist, "his lungs, as a rule, will tirst show symptoms of disease, and shorten his misery by a hectic decline, unless he should eommit suicide." Our home statistics show that the percentage of deaths by consumption in each State bears an exact proportion to the greater or smaller nuniber of inhabitants who follow indoor occupatione, and is higbest in the factory-districts of New England and the crowded cities ol our central States In Great Britain the rate increases with the latitude, and attains its maximum height in Glasgow, where, as Sir Charles Brodie remarks, windows are opened only one day for every two in Birmingham, nnd every three and a half in London; but going farther north the percentage suddenly sinks f rom twenty-threc to eleven, and even to six, if we cross the 57th parallel, which marks the boundary between the manufacturing counties of Central Scotland and the pastoral regions of the Nortb. It is distressingly probable, then, to say the least, that consumption, that most fearful scourge of the human race, is not a "mysterious dispensation oí Providence," nor a " product of our outrageous elimate," but the direct consequence of the outrageous violation of the physical laws of God. - Dr. Fclix L. Oswald, in Popular Science Monthly.