Note 22 — Chapter V · CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE “FINAL REPORT”

It is not alleged that overcrowding, per se, is the direct cause of small-pox, or of any other zymotic disease. It is, perhaps rather a condition than a cause; but under our present social economy it is so universally associated with various causes of disease—impure air, bad drainage, bad water supply, unhealthy situations, unwholesome food, overwork, and filth of every description in houses, clothing, and persons—that it affords the most general and convenient indication of an unhealthy as opposed to a healthy mode of life, and, while especially applying to zymotic diseases, is also so generally prejudicial to health as to produce a constant and very large effect upon the total mortality.