Turning from the towns to the agricultural population, where we have the right to expect the fullest measure of health, we find a condition of things which strikes an observer with dismay. The cultivators of the soil constitute the backbone of a nation. I have carefully observed them in America, and have learned to consider them the ruling force of the nation; independent, thoughtful, exercising judgment and common-sense. Again and again I have seen the corrupt or mischievous vote of the large towns reversed or overwhelmed by the country majorities. The condition of the peasants who cultivate the soil all over our country presents a terrible contrast to this picture. Fever, produced by extreme misery, seems to be endemic amongst them, sapping their strength and stupefying their minds, when it does not kill; they are crippled by rheumatism and destroyed by scrofula; their miserable cottages are damp, dark, close, and overcrowded; their pitiful wages will not supply them with decent dwelling, sustaining food, and other necessaries of life.
Let me quote testimony from high authority given within the year: ‘As many as ten persons are often crowded into a sleeping-room not 12 feet square;’ ‘the external walls are too thin, the rooms too small, no ventilation, brick or tile floors;’ ‘cottages are frequently built in marshy situations, and by stagnant water, or at the foot of hills where there is no free circulation of air; the spot is chosen on account of the small value of the land and its uselessness for agricultural purposes;’ ‘they are not able to pay what would be a fair interest on a decent cottage.’ ‘If a new colliery is opened in an upland valley, 200, 300, or 400 cottages are built very rapidly, and they are inhabited long before they are dry. The foundations as a rule are simply upon the sod, which is merely turned over, and a flag is put on that sod. There is no drainage of any kind; 40,000 to 50,000 persons will live in houses of this kind, in one valley.’ ‘There are numbers of villages throughout England where the people are drinking polluted water.’ ‘I have seen no place in England in a worse condition than this village. I have seen many native villages in South Africa, but none so bad as this!’ Volumes might be filled with similar testimony as to the physical state of our country population—a population whose condition is the truest measure of a nation’s substantial strength.
There is no error so dangerous in national life as the discouragement of honest labour. If the conditions of labour are injurious and repulsive, whether from exhausting hours of toil, unhealthy workplaces, squalid homes, or dreary monotony of toil, the workers of either sex will inevitably seek relief from hopeless drudgery in the excitement of vicious indulgences.
Our social experience joins its testimony with these statistics of town and country, to show how widespread is this destruction of health. Every housekeeper knows the extreme difficulty of obtaining a healthy servant; nine-tenths of those who apply for a situation are suffering from some chronic form of disease, which, if they belonged to a different class of society, would place them in the list of permanent invalids. There is no more frequent cause of the ill-health of domestic servants than the damp and sunless rooms in which they pass so much of their time, owing to the injurious practice of building dwelling-houses, both in town and country, without a cellar under the whole house, drained, and ventilated from side to side. No room is fit for human habitation which has not a six-foot cellar, dry, with ample through ventilation underneath it. It seems surprising that, in a damp climate like ours, with rheumatism and scrofula prevailing everywhere, this necessity has not been perceived.
It is often thought that sanitary knowledge means chiefly ventilation, food, and drainage; that it applies only to the lower classes, and that we must await the action of Government to build better houses and otherwise deal with the gigantic question of pauperism. This is a profound mistake. Health depends upon the observance of all the laws of our complex nature; it applies to the mind as well as the body. A deteriorating influence which proceeds from within is more to be dreaded than one that comes from without. The nervous system (from mental or physical causes) may be completely shattered, leaving the individual a wreck. The senses (from mental or physical causes) may be rendered so craving and irritable that the noble proportion of the nature is lost. An hysterical, feeble person is an unhealthy one; equally unhealthy is a coarse, brutal one. In either case, health, in the true meaning of the word, is thoroughly impaired. Those classes of society who are able to command every physical appliance that wealth will purchase are often, from their kind of suffering, more dangerously diseased than the labouring classes. I need only mention the spread of luxury, the delay of marriage, the frail progeny of unsuitable unions, to show how inextricably the mind and body are blended in all that concerns health.
The highest authority on this subject thus condenses the lessons of his great work on health: ‘Hygiene is based upon the physical and moral perfectibility of man, of which it furnishes the proof.’ ‘Health may be described in two words—morality, competence.’
The general deterioration of health prevailing in all classes and both sexes is most strikingly seen amongst women. It is proved by the increase of nervous and special diseases, the prevalence of scrofula by general fragility of constitution, and inability to bear the unavoidable burdens of life.
The health of the mass of educated women is a matter of serious national concern. These women form the heart of the nation, they mould its family life, they create society, they exercise an unbounded influence on the lower classes. If the health of the mother breaks down family happiness is destroyed; so if the health of this class of a people is deteriorated the welfare of the nation is imperilled both in the present and the future.
Young parents enter upon the heavy responsibilities of family life in deplorable ignorance of their duties to one another and to their children. As parents, it is their first duty to secure right conditions of health for the infant, for the child, and for youth, until they leave the parental roof. Each age demands a varying set of conditions, which become continually more complicated as the necessities of the mind increase in proportion to the physical wants. The conditions that will keep an infant in perfect health will not suffice to secure the health of the boy or girl of fifteen. As a weak stomach will impair the temper, so a vacant or corrupt mind will injure the body. Comprehensive knowledge is needed to embrace the wants of every age, and such knowledge all parents should possess.
In seeking the cause of this destruction and deterioration of life, thus briefly stated, we find it in the universal ignorance or neglect of the Divine laws of human growth. We find this neglect and disobedience equally among rich and poor, learned and unlearned, religious and worldly, in individual life, in business enterprise. The fevers of the poor, the hysteria of the luxurious, the indigestion of the learned, the devastation of our mining districts, equally show contempt for the wonderful organization which God has made—indifference to the conditions which He has clearly laid down as essential to its welfare.