Excerpt from First Annual Report of the State Board of Health of the State of Rhode Island: For the Year Ending Dec. 31, 1878

If we now take into consideration the moral aspect of the question, we are met at the threshold with a multitude of facts, more abhorrent and appalling, than can be presented from any other view. It would be impossible, within the proper limits of this paper, to portray, ex cept in the most cursory manner, the immense amount of degradation, vice and crime, that directly or Indirectly have their origin in sickness of the body. They seem to be mutually causative the one of the other, and mutually convertible. Sickness in some, benumbs the moral nature, clouds the judgment, induces nervous irritability that intensifies the animal propensities, and these lasting longer than the return of bodily strength, through perversion of moral sense, plunge the unhappy victims into dissipation and degradation. But for sick ness, many slums of vice would be depopulated.

How sickness of body taxes the resources of the State can be readily traced through various down hill grades, to the alms houses, jails, and penitentiaries. The civil and political aspects of the question, are so intimately involved in the brief considerations above, that they need no separate discussion.

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