The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1847-01-12 00:00:00

CORRESPONDENCE.

ON THE SANATORY CONDITION OF SOME
PARTS OF LIVERPOOL.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.
LETTER xxiv.
"There are three factors of the
atmospheric disease. The first ani?PpeisatTpn i_of an epidemic, or
posed state of the body; secondly, tneinscpecairiMi•sjltne Irdis-
mosphere ; and, thirdly, the accidental circumstances oft e
wea-
ther, locality, food, occupation, &c. Against the second of
these we are powerless its nature, causes, and sympathies are
too subtle for our senses to find data lo go upon. Against the
first, medicine may act profitably. Against the third, a wise
and sagacious medical police ought to be adopted; but, above
all, let every man. act like a Christian in all charity, and love,
and brotherly kindness, and sincere reliance on God's merciful

This unexceptionable summary was worded by this
acute modern philosopher, about fourteen or fifteen years
ago ; and I quote it in order that I may have the pleasure
of subscribing my own deliberate concurrence with the
several medical propositions, and also my hearty con-
sent to the concluding clause ; for I am free to confess,
once and for all, that we are in danger, through our
philosophy of second causes, of overlooking too frequently
the philosophy of venerating acknowledgment of the
Great First Cause. If, in the course of my past remarks
upon the scope and resources of a " wise and sagacious
medical police," any reader could have imbibed, correctly
or not, it matters not in one sense, the idea that, for one
of the medical profession, I was apt to set forth second
causation, in such a way as to pass over the Supreme
Cause of all other causes, I ought to feel anxious that no
such supposition should be allowed to remain. Hereupon
no ambiguity ought to be left, doubt ought to be completel3;
removed; for it is plain that the term "second cause"
presupposes a first in science, and also in something
higher than mere science. Philosophy asserts her claim
to the acknowledgment of both first and second causa-
tion : that which absorbs all scientific pretension into its
own supreme unity, distinguishes as faithfully between,
but never divides them. They are essential compo-
nents of sound philosophical truth, which must ever
preserve their relative order towards each other, or the
first great law of nature" were broken. It is evident,
that he who only recognises a distinction between them,
holds them both ; whilst he who, in order to distinguish,
must divide, may possibly drop one, and, as the earlier'
cause is the one more remote from his scrutiny, that will
be the one he will be in danger of overlooking.
I consider that I have now brought my fact-reporting
to a close, and I hope that it is demonstrated—
Firstly,—That " the purlieus of Liverpool Proper are
awful in capability for developing fevers of all kinds, and
of the profoundest intensity," which proposition I started ;
with the affirmation of, in my second letter, dated
March last.

That these foci of malaria have been fertile beyond even
the terms of my awn prediction, if that were possible, as
furnishing the predisposing causes of those fevers which