Tom-all-Alone's and the Slum

From Bleak House by Charles Dickens
The rotting slum that is itself a Chancery property—Dickens's image of how social neglect breeds disease that spreads to the highest in the land.
Chapter 46 (Stop Him!)

Tom-all-Alone's as the source of contagion: 'There is not a drop of Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere.' The famous passage on disease as social leveler.

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Chapter 31 (Nurse and Patient)

Esther contracts smallpox from Jo via Charley—the literal infection passing from slum to gentry.

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