The Coming Danger by N. Y. Tribune

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Aug 29, 1865

The Coming Danger.

By N. Y. Tribune

DEATH seems to be riding his Pale Horse over desert, plain, sea and city—and we trace his march from Asia and Africa to Constantinople, thence through the countries of the Danube, and over the mountains to Spain—until his advance, when last heard from, was encamped in Manchester, England. Whether he has time to cross the Atlantic or not before the frosts come we cannot say, but Manchester is not many days distant, and Death seems to travel with the swiftness of the morning. We should not be surprised to see his grim majesty any day, debarking at Castle Garden and riding up Broadway. We do not expect the frosts for six or eight weeks, and he might have a busy time during that period, with time to prepare for the coming summer. When we know that cholera is a controllable disease, and that the merest prudence on the part of citizen or State would stay its progress, it seems almost madness for us to hesitate. Measures should at once be taken to put the country in a condition of sanitary defense. It might be done by the regular authorities, but they never do the right thing at the right time. Somebody should do it. Every man in his own sphere can do much toward preventing this pestilence. All plagues, cholera, and yellow fever especially, assail the intemperate and unwary first. If a man lives a life of dissipation and recklessness, drinks vile liquors, allows his system to become vitiated and debilitated by disease, he will pass away before the contagion like a breath. We invite disease when we wrong the laws of nature. We be-come easy victims to pestilence when we allow the liver to become deranged, and the lungs to lose power, and the brain to become heated and oppressed by long hours of sloth and intemperance. Every man, therefore, should mount guard over himself and his home to resent the progress of the invader.

This, however, will not meet the great duty that lies before us. Everybody's case is nobody's case, and to drive back disease we must organize the proper effort. A correspondent suggests the Sanitary Commission as a proper organization. He thinks the city should be divided into small districts, and that benevolent and shrewd visitors should go into each district, advising and suggesting the proper hygienic measures. They should have it in their power to apply disinfectants of all kinds, and at all times, so as to destroy the unhealthy exhalations. Our tenement houses should receive special attention, and every effort made to secure pure ventilation, and induce proper dietary laws among the poor. In cases of extreme or helpless poverty, money might be distributed to aid in the purchase of clothing or bedding, or removing impurities in the furniture of the houses. While, of course, it would be impossible to remodel our sewerage, this correspondent thinks it might be greatly improved, so that the miasma that burdens the air with death should be prevented. Properly aided, the Sanitary Commission might do the whole work, and save thousands of lives.

Our correspondent's plan is perhaps as good as any. Voluntary organization may do something, but we hardly think it will reach the root of the danger. A number of good people may get together and pass resolutions against cholera and subscribe a hundred thousand dollars for sanitary purposes—and a number of needy people will spend it. When the money ends, the labor will end—and when the good people are called upon for more, they will probably invite you to call on somebody else. When the danger really comes—when 10,000 men and women are dead—we shall see noble evidences of courage and energy, self-sacrifice and self-denial—our people daring death himself in the effort to destroy his horrors. These sacrifices always come too late. We do not want devotion merely—romantic struggling with death in the hour of his highest triumphs. Let us take the housewife's maxim as she locks the cream away from the cats—"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." What we want is systematic, authoritative action. We want Commission of wise and active men, who can go to those nests of disease and death "with power to act." Let New York be purified from palace to hovel—give disease no resting place—cleanse, drench, purge and sweeten; give us fresh air, water—and plenty of it. Do not exact exhausting labor. Aid the poor man to buy a house in the suburbs without paying fancy prices for land and lumber. It is a mighty task, with an endless variety of social reforms, and worthy the genius and devotion of our people. Let it be done, and done quickly.