Public health of the City of New York : remarks of Rev. F.C. Ewer, before the Sanitary Association, November 21, 1861.

  • Ferdinand Cartwright Ewer
Date:
1861
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public health of the City of New York : remarks of Rev. F.C. Ewer, before the Sanitary Association, November 21, 1861. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    You may think, too, in New York, tliat perhaps by unusual and long-sustained exertion you might manage to secure a bare majority at the polls, for order and morality, and attention to the health of the miserably poor. But in one respect this is a mistake. Gentlemen, there is a great monster for good on this Island ; but it is asleep. It is criminally asleep; and, while it sleeps, the devil sows tares. That monster once but thoroughly aroused, even New York would be astonished at the overwhelming ma- jority for right which it is in her power to roll up everywhere at the polls. Now, I say, it is the duty of some body of men to awake this monster, and set it to work. Let a voice go up from this city which no politician will dare disobey. It can be done, and it should be done. All honor, then, to the noble body of men who have commenced this work. They should have our prayers, and, what is better, they should have our hearty cooperation, for to labor is to pray. But I have lingered somewhat too long on this point. Eveiy one, ]\Ir. President, is aware, in a general way, that in all large cities, and of course in New York, there are dark spots here and there, where humanity clusters in a festering mass ; where men go down into the baptismal waters of filth, and rise in ignorance, disease, and loathsome crime. They arc the burying grounds of morality ; they are the charnel houses into which all that is noble in man descends, forever, to death. There is a resurrection from beneath the marble monument, but these graves never give up their dead. In them lie, forever, murdered virtues ; and there hopes sleep, never to awake. But when we liave thus said all, we have not said every
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