Note 553 — OF NUISANCES, LEGALLY, MEDICALLY, AND CHEMICALLY CONSIDERED.

Dr. Garthshore has observed that women, during the period of utero-gestation, on account of the increased irritability of the system at that period, are frequently affected by odours, that at any other time would not have produced the slightest impression; and this experienced practitioner was of opinion that the dangerous convulsions which sometimes seize the patient towards the end of a tedious and difficult labour, may arise from the long continued inspiration of the air of a close and unventilated chamber crowded with attendants and friends.

This observation suggests to us another circumstance which, though it has never, we believe, been legally treated as a nuisance, well deserves to be so considered; we allude to the public exposure of disgusting objects for the purpose of exciting charity. The vagrant laws are evidently ineffective for the purpose of removing them, nor has the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity been much more successful; those who have observed the pertinacity with which some sturdy vagrants persecute pregnant females, obtruding on their view some ulcerous sore, stump, or deformity, will agree in the necessity of some more vigorous measures than have been yet employed for the abatement of this species of nuisance.