Excerpt from The Prevention of Disease, Insanity, Crime, and Pauperism: A Paper Read Before the Conference of Charities, at Cincinnati, May 22, 1878 Upon a subject so large and important as the above title indi cates, only a few brief suggestions can be made in a short essay. The topics mentioned cover the whole ground of public charity, and involve the most essential agencies in its administration. No community or people can be found so advanced in civilization, or so perfect in morals, as to be free from these terrible evils; and, notwithstanding the immense labor bestowed and expense incurred to check or prevent them, still as a whole they seem to increase, certainly in some directions. The agencies employed to check them do not appear very successful, nor do the ends attained correspond to the amount of labor and expense which have been put forth. In all attempts at reform, or for the removal of great evils, it is the dictate of wisdom to select those agencies which are most likely to bring about the greatest results with the least labor or sacrifice of means; in other words, to nip the evil in the bud, or to dig up and destroy its roots, rather than to lop off only its branches. A great amount of time, labor, and cost are consumed in dealing with the ejects of evils, without reducing or removing their chief sources or primary causes. Thus, in the history of dis ease and insanity, while there has been an immense expenditure of labor and means to cure these evils, little comparatively has been done to prevent them. The same holds true in respect to crime and pauperism. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.