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This, the annual report of Dr. Smith Townshend, is a very carefully prepared document. The tables, wood-cuts and maps serve as excellent illustrations of the text. Of course most of the material is of local interest, but the illustrations given of defective drainage in a rapidly growing city like Washington, with the money that is now being spent upon costly private residences, must be of the first importance, and it is evident from his report that Dr. Townshend has fully appreciated this. That great bugbear, malaria, it would seem, cannot be readily treated from a statistical standpoint, as "Malarial fever does not appear as a prominent cause of death in the mortality reports. It is the malarial poison that hastens death in phthisis or consumption, retards convalescence in many other diseases, and, complicating, forms into the incurable what would otherwise be a curable disease." The population of the District of