Page:Life or Death in India.djvu/7

 More than this we do not know.

(2) In past years—not so long past—in a great town of England, 47 children out of every 100 used to die before they were five years old. But why those 47?

We do know how this infant mortality, or rather massacre of the innocents, can be mitigated or prevented; namely, by cleanliness of house and child, by fresh air, care as to food and clothes, whitewashing, by 'minding baby' in short, and by avoiding all 'soothing syrups' whatever.

But we do not know which babies will be taken and which not.

All this is pre-eminently true of India. From the great Sunderbunds, where cholera seems to have had its birth-place, and had not been born some centuries ago [great towns, shown in old Portuguese maps, now no longer to be found, seem to attest that the Sunderbunds were not then the home and hearth of epidemics], cholera sets forth on its terrible march over Asia, so reaching Europe; but why in one year and not in another we know not.

If the Sunderbunds were drained, cultivated, and again rendered fit for human habitation, would cholera disappear?

3. Now, after this caution, to proceed: The results we find, in the last Report of the 'Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India,' and in other District Reports, have been so striking, that they