CHAPTER XII. _recapitulation of Principles_

Recapitulation of Principles

I. The attainment of truth, not the gratification of curiosity or of personal ends, is the sole and distinctive aim of genuine scientific research.

II. It is a radical intellectual error to apply the same methods of investigation, suitable to inorganic facts, to the study of organic facts. Natural law being mind ruling matter, every method employed in research into organic Nature must respect and take into account the inseparable mental factor in each type of sentient life, or it becomes unscientific, and may promote fallacy, not truth. Destructive experiment on living creatures, even under the partial suspension of consciousness produced by anæsthetics, is an erroneous method, producing confused or contradictory results.

III. Scientific research in biology must be based upon close and extensive observation of the varying forms of animal life, under natural conditions, with post-mortem examination of the records left by health and disease. Experiments, whether for the repair of lesions or the cure of disease, can only become scientific when made upon the type of life to be benefited by the experiment.

IV. Any experimentation which creates involuntary suffering in living creatures vitiates the necessary conditions of scientific research, and tends to degrade human conscience by producing indifference to suffering.

V. In training our future practitioners of the healing art, the cultivation of respect for life and the strengthening of enlightened sympathetic conscience in dealing with all poor or helpless creatures are of paramount importance. The present system of medical education requires revision in order to make health, not disease, the central subject of study.

Finally, full and generous encouragement to those who are engaged in important painless research is urgently needed. Such research should be carried on, if possible, in connection with the great body of serious scientific investigations, by persons of proved ability and clear moral sense, and the work should be cordially open to the observation of all earnest friends.

Such research, reconciling by right methods of investigation intellectual activity with human conscience, would increase our knowledge and advance our well-being in accordance with the higher reason of the race. Only when thus guided by intelligence and conscience can biological research deserve the noble name of science.

It is by the recognition of this true method of biological research and by the generous support of physiologists who honestly seek for truth, even when opposed by temporary fashions of medical opinion, that medicine will become a science.

FOOTNOTES:

Sir B. W. Richardson, Biological Experimentation: its Functions and Limits, p. 15.

This sound method is well exemplified in the writings of the French naturalist, Le Roy.

The former horrors of the hospital operating-room are graphically described from personal observation in Sir B. W. Richardson’s treatise, The Mastery of Pain.

See the standard work of Hirsch, Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology (New Sydenham Society), vol. ii., pp. 416-466. The value of this translation is greatly increased by its excellent index.

Thus, the authorities of Paris ordered twenty friendless dogs to be tied to the branches of trees in a wood, and a shell made in the municipal laboratory exploded amongst them, riddling and mangling them fearfully.

The humane and carefully-guarded Bill drawn up by the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals, and introduced by the Earl of Harrowby and Lord Carnarvon, was rejected.

The judicious remarks of Lord Farrer in relation to municipal affairs apply equally to the subject under consideration. He says: ‘My immediate object, however, is not to preach upon the general question, but to make a practical suggestion. What we want to know is, Which of the two ways of doing any particular work is the cheaper and better? Much experience of public departments leads me to doubt their own reports upon their own doings; not, of course, from any dishonesty on the part of the officials, but from a natural tendency in every man to make the best of what he does. It is for this reason, as well as from want of sufficient experience, that I cannot feel absolute confidence in the reports made to the London County Council on the results of their own experiments.’

‘Professor Leon le Fort, Professor Verneuil, Professor Duplay, and Professor Tillaux, have been asked by a public journal for their opinions on the operative mania (furie opératoire) said to be prevalent at present. Professor le Fort says it is much more widespread in France than in other countries, and in a long letter he protests against the custom amongst the young French surgeons, in order to bring their names before the public, “to seek out some operation unknown in France, then seek out a victim on whom they can perform it, in order to report it before a medical society, and perhaps also show the patient.” Then, says M. le Fort, they take up the operation as a speciality, perform it on 100 or 200 patients, and thus gain a reputation. Professor Verneuil protests against the abuse of operations in general, and especially of gynæcological operations. He deplores the prurigo secandi with which so many of the French surgeons are attacked. Professor Duplay and Professor Tillaux express the same opinions.’ See Medical Reprints, May, 1893.

This naturalist, when amongst cannibals in the Emin Pasha Expedition, bribed the cannibal tribe to eat a young negro girl.

The entirely negative results of all experiments made upon the lower animals to determine if cholera is communicable, or where the poison resides, is demonstrated by an endless series of experiments on the lower animals made in many countries. The extent and severity of these experiments, as well as their inconclusiveness, is impartially detailed in the classic work of Hirsch, Handbook of Geographical and Historical Pathology, vol. i., pp. 476-480.

Sir B. W. Richardson, Biological Experimentation: its Function and Limits, pp. 92, 93.

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM

THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE EASTER SEASON, 1882

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM

About thirty years ago a little band of ardent and earnest men joined themselves together as Christian Socialists, under the guidance of the Rev. F. Maurice, Rev. Chas. Kingsley, and other able and hopeful leaders. They shared in a high degree that ardent desire after ‘Practical Christianity’--that embodiment in every act of daily life of the spirit of our Master’s teachings--which has always existed in the Christian Church, and which can only cease with the disappearance of the Christian faith.

The grand idea of human brotherhood is a vital principle of our Lord’s teaching. It is the foundation on which He builds His Church. But practical Christianity cannot exist unless political and social economy are founded upon this principle of brotherhood. Trade and manufactures, agriculture and education, national government and the individual home, are not Christian unless they are inspired by this central principle, laid down by our Divine Master, and reiterated in every page of His wonderful life--viz., that we must live as brethren under the inspiration of a wise and loving Father.

Attempts to realize more fully this fundamental portion of the Christian faith, by special associated efforts, have always been observed in every age. From those early times when the disciples laid their offerings at the Apostles’ feet, and strove to ‘have all things in common,’ to the present day, the attempt to secure higher ends by the power of combination--a combination inspired by the highest idea of right--is always going on.

Christian Socialism, therefore, is no new idea. It is as old as our faith. It is the shaping of actual daily life on the principle of Christian brotherhood. It enters in some degree into every association--church, chapel, or society of any kind whatsoever--which seeks to embody an unselfish or a higher spiritual idea; but the Christian Socialist believes that the structure of society in every part should be moulded by the idea of united interests.

The very gradual acquisition of wisdom by our race, however (a slowness which seems to be the necessary condition for securing both freedom and strength), leads to the frequent exercise of zeal without knowledge. Direct attempts to join people together under better conditions than the haphazard methods by which villages swell into towns have frequently ended in failure.

But each successive generation enters upon active life with increased intellectual development and with increased command over material forces. If equal enlargement of the moral nature accompanies the growth of intelligence, then the generation has made a solid advance in wisdom, and the practical Christianity of true brotherhood is nearer at hand. The Christian Socialist believes that many principles on which a better society must be founded have come into clearer light during the past thirty years, and have been, and are being, tested by varied and valuable experiment.

The term Christian is here used in a legitimate practical sense. Reverently and heartily a Christian must accept the rule and guide of life so emphatically laid down by our Master--viz., that in eating and drinking, in buying and selling, at home and abroad, we are to act for our brethren, not for ourselves alone. We are to seek, first of all, righteousness.

The problem we have to face is the ever-increasing amount and variety of evils which we see around us, and to ascertain how far this is caused by the present selfish structure of society, by the false individualism which hypocritically asks, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Evils now increase upon us more rapidly than we can remove them. Pauperism and vice, drunkenness and crime, mammon worship and frivolity, dishonesty and corruption, are all bred by ourselves. They are largely produced by the conditions of the society into which children are born, and by which they are moulded. Ten years of squalor or degrading conditions may deteriorate or ruin the nature of the child. My attention was once called to a bright and charming little girl, brought to a public institution by a poor mother fallen into sickness and poverty. One year was given to the mother to reclaim her child. On a subsequent visit, after eighteen months’ interval, I failed to recognise that child; her brightness was gone, her movements had grown listless and awkward, her intelligence was dulled, her expression vacant, she was sinking with frightful rapidity into the hopeless pauper.

How pitiful are the results of our penitentiaries and reformatories, of our workhouses, orphan asylums, and industrial schools, of all the various charities by which we painfully and vainly try to mop up evil and misery, or to sweep it out of our sight. The recipients of punishment or care, when released, in the large majority of cases, fall back again into the crime, temptation, and evil from which they had been taken, and the flood of ruffianism and vice rises ever higher.

In the hard and crushing strife for decent living in which the great mass of our population are entangled, health is injured, hope dies out, and the gas-lighted gin-shop is the solace, as the dreary workhouse is the refuge of those who have ceased to hope. Yet the great mass of these persons have tried to do honest work. They have once hoped to support wife and children as an honest man should do. How is it that capital and labour have failed to come together in such a way that every willing worker can secure a comfortable livelihood, that every honest man can bring up his family in health and virtue? The relation of capital to labour is a vital question of practical Christianity.

Consider also the great agrarian fight always going on to some extent and periodically breaking out in revolution and outrage. Why is it that the great bulk of English men and women are divorced from the soil? Why are they always crowding into towns, whilst the precious natural heritage of land is so often wasted and going out of cultivation? Health and happiness should be found in country life. Such a life should not be one of dreariness and ennui, or of hopeless drudgery. There is no life so suitable for the healthy development of childhood as a country life, with natural home influences. The care of animals, the cultivation and observation of natural objects, the pure air and abundant exercise which can be enjoyed, mark the country as the natural home of childhood. Again, the production in perfection and abundance of all the articles which naturally belong to various soils is a primary need of healthy national growth. The conditions under which such cultivation can be best carried on, with the kind and proportion of manufactures which might advantageously spring up in connection with it, affect the very structure of society. They provide the necessary material and social conditions which furnish the possibility and favouring of a religious life, or which create serious obstacles to such a life.

The relation of the people to the soil of their native land is a very serious question of practical Christianity.

Again, in what manner is the education of the various classes of our children carried on? Consider the education given to the boys of the aristocracy and upper classes. What chance have these lads of growing into a sense of Christian brotherhood? They are fawned upon from babyhood; initiated at school into the most heathen vices; corrupted by luxury, taught that money can do everything, that rank will be servilely worshipped. How can these poor lads become the large-hearted leaders of a society founded on the Great Master’s teaching of brotherhood? The character of education does not depend only on the more or less wise oversight and arrangements of the schoolmaster, but still more on the constant influences of the life in which the child grows up. Trace the various stages of education downwards, through all classes of the community, to the enormous mass of little boys and girls trained from babyhood into vice and ruffianism, and we see that education is a vital subject of practical Christianity.

Consider next the relations of the sexes. This subject is the fundamental question of society, for the element of society is the man, woman, and child, not the individual. How do our laws and customs inculcate manly honour, womanly dignity--in short, Christian life? Carefully studying this subject in its widespread ramifications, it is seen to be the deepest question of human brotherhood--i.e., of practical Christianity.

When, proceeding from more private to public affairs, we examine the modifications or arrangements of municipal institutions which have arisen in our towns, the examination is not encouraging. It is the heathen, not the Christian, principle which is chiefly exemplified. It is self intensified. The new power created throws off a sense of responsibility to those who create it. No enlarged sense of duty springs from the trust that is thus given to individuals; but petty cabals and bickerings arise, narrow party views are fostered, selfish interests advanced, or a foolish air of authority is assumed. The more high-minded inhabitants shrink from entering into corrupt political contest; centralization increases as municipal control is degraded. Local and general government is too often only a parody of representative institutions. The important question arises, In what way can we who believe that public as well as private life should be guided by a religious spirit attain the end? How can we form associations and delegate necessary authority in such a way as to advance Christian, not heathen, life? In observing the effect of Law upon the education of a nation, we find that its embodiment in government forms a very important branch of practical Christianity.

When we ponder all these vital questions, and earnestly strive to put into practice the principles of action which we believe to be profoundly true, we find our Christian sense of right shocked at every turn by fixed conditions, which are the result of selfishness, not of brotherhood. The spirit of self-interest, only useful as a servant, has usurped the false position of master. Like all our faculties, self-interest needs a higher guidance, or it degenerates into the narrowest selfishness. We have not yet learned the one grand lesson of Christianity--viz., that the largest view of self-interest can only be found in brotherhood.

The inquiry now to be made is whether any new principles of association, co-operation, combination--or by whatever name we choose to express united interests--have so grown and been proved within the last generation, that we may make successful advance on the path dimly seen by the noble men I have referred to.

There have been many failures in attempts at the realization of associated or organized life; but there are also many and striking examples of successful, though imperfect, organization, founded either upon a religious idea or on business enterprise, or on the enthusiasm of some clever and benevolent individual. Roman Catholic, Moravian, and Shaker communities will illustrate the first series of successful organization; joint-stock enterprises and co-operative stores the second; Leclaire’s house decorators’ guild and the Familistère of Guise the third. It is through union of the forces exemplified in these three classes of association that we may attain to a nineteenth-century realization of practical Christianity in the future growth of towns or colonies.

The following are some of the chief applications of the principle of Christian brotherhood, which we believe will remould the structure of future society:

1. The repurchase of land by Christian joint-stock companies, in order that its control and management may henceforth belong to those who live upon it and use it.

The absolute irresponsible individual possession of land becomes, as society advances, contrary to the best interests of a nation. The soil, which is limited in quantity, but indispensable to the maintenance and welfare of the people, should not be treated as an individual selfish speculation, regardless of its most advantageous use, and of the needs of those who may live upon it.

It is the slow but sure result of the irresponsible monopoly of the soil by individuals which is at the root of a great evil--viz., the unnatural and diseased growth of great unorganized or selfishly organized towns. Our towns, formerly the haphazard growth of accident, are becoming more and more the growth of selfish speculation--i.e., the false organization of self-aggrandizement. The hereditary or other holder of land leases it to speculators, whose one object is to make as much pecuniary profit as possible out of the lease. This is the one point held steadily in view, often through a series of underletting, in which each fresh speculator seeks to make a new profit. Health, convenience, human welfare in its necessities and interlinkings, are never thought of, or are entirely secondary to gain. A showy neighbourhood for the rich, yielding the highest rents that can be screwed out, and a crowded neighbourhood for the poor, with still higher proportionate rents, are created. Gardens disappear in the dreary mass of showy, badly-constructed brick-and-mortar quarters in which the young generation grows up--dreary quarters, but where rents and rates are constantly rising. This is the result of irresponsible individual ownership and perverted organization in all our rapidly-growing towns. It is a potent cause of growing immorality.

The control of land by a society or colony living upon it and using it, does not forbid the leasing of land, under wise conditions, to persons who are members of the society. It is the irresponsible individual possession of land, with the speculation which such a method of holding gives rise to, which is the principle always ultimately injurious to society.

2. Economy in distribution and management. A rational economy in the retail distribution of products, in the domestic arrangements of our homes, in the official management of local and general government, will set free an immense number of persons whose time is now needlessly occupied. The talent and energy of this wasted multitude should be turned to increase of production and other necessary and valuable employment, under the wise freedom of united interests.

3. A fair share of profits to all workers. This is a most important principle, which can only be solved under the guidance of Christian brotherhood. In the increased production which will result from wise economy in distribution, management, and government, an equitable division of profits between capital, ability, and labour must be arranged. Interests must be united, industry stimulated, and hope held out to the humblest worker in a Christian colony. When a young man commences life in the honourable estate of Christian marriage, it is the first duty of Christian society to support his hope and energy. The future of this family is a matter of national concern. Steady industry deserves a fair and increasing share in the profits it helps to create. Counsel, if needed, encouragement to the mother in the healthy and virtuous education of her children, and opportunity for hopeful occupation, are all positive duties owed to every member of a Christian society. The fulfilment of this duty depends in a great measure upon the righteous relation of capital to labour.

4. The formation of insurance funds which will secure aid to every worker in sickness or old age. Thrift, self-control, and an honourable sense of independence are the results of such provision, which would be the greatest possible aid to the noble temperance movement.

5. An arrangement of dwellings which will facilitate communication, domestic service and supply, sanitary arrangement, the education of children, and municipal government. These objects must be secured if the rapid degradation of our poorer English homes is to be checked. Parental influence and responsibility are equally disappearing in the homes from which all sanctity has departed.

6. The entire abolition of all trade in the human body.

The waste of virile force and the degradation of womanly character which result from the barbarous remnant of slavery existing in our midst under the form of prostitution is incalculable. No community which aspires to Christian life can permit this hideous trade to exist. The buying and selling the human body is a natural wrong. The fearful evils, moral and physical, which result from such trade prove its inherent iniquity. Love, with the duties and responsibilities which accompany its expression, is the only Christian warrant for the intimate union of the sexes, and the growth and welfare of society absolutely depends upon the wise guidance of these relations by Christian principle. The wonderful advance of intelligence and moral perception on this vital subject during the present generation is the most hopeful sign of the nearer approach of organized Christian society. As a striking contrast to growing immorality, the possibility and incalculable benefit of equal purity for boys and girls, for men and women, is the great truth which is springing into vigorous life in this Nineteenth Century. A new world of hope and freedom opens to women, a new realm of energy to men, from the consecration of this mighty power of sex, which is descending upon our age as a great guide for the future. This God-created force has hitherto been squandered in these earlier centuries of our world’s life. Ignorance of woman’s true dignity and providential position has been the greatest obstacle hitherto in the Christian organization of society. This ignorance now slowly but surely vanishing, opens to us a great and glorious promise of unlimited future progress.

The principles thus expressed in very condensed form appear, from their present maturer development, to be the especial gain of this age. They are the legitimate results of Christian thought, growing in comprehensiveness, and conscientiously applying itself to a solution of the problems of social life.

Every proposition now set forth requires, however, long and careful consideration. Some persons may not realize the dangerous and growing evils which the prevalence of opposite methods of action is inflicting on society. Young countries possessing abundance of unoccupied land may not appreciate evils from which older countries suffer from individual monopoly of land. Other persons may fail to see the full bearing of these principles of Christian Socialism on our daily relations. Others, again, may be entirely unable to foresee the methods by which a Christian organization of society can ever become a practical fact. For these reasons union in preparation is indispensable. The wisest ways of realizing these principles in all their practical details require the varied knowledge of different classes of persons. They require the careful consideration of many minds, possessing both varied experience and a profound sense of the necessity of Christian organization. If, however, the principles laid down are true, then their realization must be only a question of time. In our towns much may be done to place both business relations and domestic life on a sounder basis. The gradual introduction of methods leading in the right direction is possible, by both men and women, in the two spheres of business and home life, when the end to be obtained is thoroughly understood. A still more rapid advance may be made by those who wish to establish country life on a more Christian plan by uniting religious principle, joint-stock enterprise, and wise guidance in the organization of an industrial colony--a colony which would be the most potent Christian Missionary Society.

Religious principle must be recognised as the essential basis of permanent future growth. Only a large comprehension of the Christian teaching of human brotherhood creates the highest conscientiousness, with a sense of responsibility to an unseen but parental Creator. No accumulation of material wealth, no appeal to the lower faculties of our nature alone or chiefly, will ever hold human beings together in permanent and harmonious organization of daily life.

Christian conscientiousness is the only power we know of, capable of controlling and guiding selfhood. This controlling force is indispensable in any wise effort to unite human beings together in the varied interests of everyday life. Without religious principle we possess no efficient check either upon the selfish scramble for wealth, or on the soulless pursuit of science, or on the enthralment of physical pleasure.

Consider some of our popular social maxims--‘Charity begins at home,’ ‘Take care of No. 1,’ ‘Competition is the life of trade,’ ‘Demand must govern supply,’ ‘Buy cheap and sell dear,’ etc. No one will deny that there is an element of truth in all these maxims; but their direct logical results, pushed to an extreme under the sole guidance of selfish interest, become diabolical. This is clearly illustrated by a remark once made to my own father by a Southern sugar-planter. He stated that he could raise slaves so cheaply that it was the most profitable plan to use them up in five or six years, and supply their place with fresh ones!

The same necessity for the guiding influence of Christian conscientiousness is seen in the pursuit of science. The modern dicta, ‘Medicine has nothing to do with morality,’ ‘Knowledge is its own end and justification,’ are the maxims of heathen, not Christian philosophers. Indeed, many of those who now pursue scientific investigation willingly assent to this statement, having lost all knowledge of the value of true Christianity as the highest spiritual guide of our race.

Accepting, then, the principle of Christian brotherhood as the necessary religious foundation and constant guide of any true organization, it is evident that all these weighty problems, now briefly indicated must be considered and solved by the ‘Church.’

A Church, in the true sense of the word, is a society of men and women who, accepting the Divine Mission of Christ, strive honestly to embody His teaching in daily life. As each age grows out of the life of the preceding age, so the practical incarnation of our Lord’s teaching varies in form from age to age. In 1882 the form which Christian life takes must necessarily vary from its form in 1800. Three generations of men have gained immensely in intellectual, scientific, and moral development. All the conditions under which human beings grow up have changed. What we now especially and urgently need from the ‘Church’ is aid in adapting the never-changing principle of Christian brotherhood to the ever-changing conditions of Nineteenth-Century life. We need sermons and conferences and earnest life in the Church; but the sermons must take up the Christian view of the relation of capital to labour, the Christian view of the relation of the sexes, the Christian protection and sound education of the young--in short, the whole conduct of life, from the cradle to the grave, in private and public. A certain inevitable hypocrisy is engendered by listening week after week to lofty theories which are never put into practice, or to impracticable suggestions. The soul grows callous when teaching demands one course of action and daily life enforces a quite opposite course. We need to learn in what way our actual life, public and private, can be guided by our Lord’s injunction of brotherhood instead of selfhood. Our Church Conferences should be the honest and eager effort of every man and woman to consider together how these true principles can be carried out by them. A Christian Church Conference must ponder the life of that army of little drudges in our underground kitchens, of the blasphemous boys and girls who gather at night in our public places, of the vicious roués who crowd on us from London, of the struggles of the poor householder who knows not how to pay the heavy rent, of the tendencies of the trader oppressed by taxes, who sinks all scruples in the desire to get money, and of the speculator whose one desire is to make ‘wealth accumulate, though men decay.’ These are the problems for Church Conferences which the practical Christianity of the Nineteenth Century urgently requires should be solved.

It is only on these humble but indispensable foundations that a Church which meets the needs of the age can be founded. It is only in a Church so founded that prayer and praise and the worship of the Great Father can become a glorious reality, and never sink into formalism.

A true Church, then, suited to the needs of this age, must be a self-governing, industrial community, guided by Christian principle, holding and managing its own lands, varied industries, and colleges. It should send off out-shoots from time to time, new self-governing colonies at home and abroad. These colonies necessarily possessing varied individual colouring, according to occupation and composition, should all agree in the one great uniting principle--organization on the principles of Christian brotherhood. The Christian idea of united interest, instead of the narrow antagonism of individual selfishness, will be the distinguishing mark of true Church colonies--the practical Christianity of the future.

There are large numbers of sincere followers of our Spiritual Guide who clearly perceive the radical evils above referred to: persons who long to devote thought, time, and means to the labour of forming a Christian society; persons who would rejoice to leave their possessions to the noblest Missionary work of the age. But these earnest seers are scattered far and wide; they require the indispensable strength of union. A grand work is before all the Churches to join their members together under the noble banner of Christian Socialism. By careful study of the various practical examples which now exist of successful although imperfect organization, preparation can be made for union together in the formation of a true Church Colony. A band of Christian Socialists thus uniting in earnest preparation (whilst neglecting no immediate duty) will be strengthened and guided in the course of a few years to initiate the most important and urgent work that our age now calls for.

The meaning of the Easter season is the arising of Christianity from the grave--that grave where it lies bound in darkness, corrupting in worldliness, dying through selfishness; but, thank God! not yet dead. May our religious people awake from their fatal lethargy and roll away the stone from the sepulchre, by the establishment of a true Christian Society!

FOOTNOTES:

The works referring to the economic principles laid down in this paper, with the statistics and experiments which support and illustrate them, are too numerous to mention here; but they are of the utmost value to the Christian Socialist.

ON THE DECAY

MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

A CHAPTER OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, 1885

ON THE DECAY OF MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

It is only in the belief that a simple narrative of facts, exactly as they occurred, will show more vividly than an abstract statement can do, the dangers which threaten our free institutions, that I venture to offer this personal narrative to municipal voters, and particularly to women householders.

When, in 1879, I became a householder in Hastings I did not at all realize that I thereby acquired the right to vote in municipal affairs, and that this right necessarily involved a corresponding duty and responsibility--the duty, viz., of voting intelligently, and necessarily a certain responsibility for the way in which the government of the town was carried on.

I soon observed, however, that in the autumn, although I was neither a Conservative nor a Liberal, I was called on by the Conservative and the Liberal candidates for election to the Town Council to ask for my vote, and although these visits often led to interesting conversation, and my opinions were assented to with the most flattering courtesy before the elections took place, I soon perceived that all influence ceased with the election; the matters went on in the same way without me as with me, and my supposed privilege of voting seemed really to be very much of a mockery. Being, moreover, a peaceable person, and much occupied with subjects of interest, it appeared to be rather a waste of time to concern myself with an election which was managed by cliques on strictly party issues, with no regard to questions of social well-being, nor necessarily to the selection of the wisest and best man, but only of the person who could in any way secure the largest party vote.

Being compelled, also, as far as my limited powers of observation admitted, to criticise the two great parties of the State, as both committing much injustice, and as rather guided by class selfishness than by high morality, I could not feel any enthusiasm for elections carried on by party strife.

I thus began to fall into that easy state of indifference which seems rapidly becoming the general condition of the mass of people who are supposed by their votes to control municipal affairs; I retained, however, an uneasy consciousness that in some way I was failing to meet a duty that was laid upon me. I was roused from this fatal moral lethargy by witnessing what seemed to me an act of gross injustice--viz., a robbery of the poor of their inheritance. This was the diversion of the funds of the Magdalen Charity (a bequest from the piety and beneficence of past ages, now grown to an income of some thousands annually) to the foundation of a middle-class grammar school. The injustice was committed under the sanction of the Charity Commissioners, notwithstanding a brave fight by some of our conscientious inhabitants, carried on for more than two years. But class interests and short-sighted officialism proved stronger than justice in this case.

So painful an experience effectually opened my eyes to the irreligion of not attending to the duties which lie nearest to us, and I saw that the condition of the poor is very near to us. I fully realized, also, for the first time, the constant duty which rests upon all those to whom special municipal rights are given, to concern themselves with the management of the town in which they live, this responsibility especially resting upon every one on whom is laid the duty of voting. Beginning, then, to attend my parish meetings, my sympathy was soon aroused by seeing the bitter struggle of the industrious poor going on all around me, to avoid sinking into pauperism. Cases of inability to pay the rates were constantly coming before us from weary struggling men and women, who, if they sometimes ‘drink and forget their poverty,’ demand pity more than blame.

Every year the pinch of poverty grew sharper. My own respectable young servant could not marry her decent lover because rent was so dear. As roomy lodging-houses and hotels spread along the sea-front, speculation grew, and the mass of the people were huddled together in smoky cram or squeezed out into dreary suburbs, far away from their work or from opportunities for honest industry. I soon also learned the horror with which the poor regard the workhouse; how they would willingly die in peace in the forlornest home rather than be forced into what they regard as a hopeless, cruel prison. My indignation deepened as I thought of the deed still in our archives, in which, ‘I, Petronilla de Cham, of Hastings, in the pure and lawful power of my widowhood,’ grant a tract of land for maintaining the poor old men and women of Hastings in decent maintenance and godly service; the brothers and sisters of the Magdalen Hospital. ‘And I, Lady Petronilla and my heirs will warrant and defend the aforesaid five acres of land with precincts, to be held by the brothers and sisters freely, quietly, well, and peacefully for ever,’ they praying for the souls of their benefactors.

As descendants of humane and pious ancestors, it seems to be as clearly a religious duty to consider the condition of the poor in 1885 as it was in 1292, when Lady Petronilla de Cham made her foundation gift to the Magdalen Charity.

The more I considered this important problem of how to aid the struggling poor in their heroic efforts to live decently, the more important to my mind became the subject of taxation; how the rates of a town are raised, and how they are expended. Unhappily, we see all over the country that, in the same way, ancient endowments for doles, retreats, pensions, and portions are swept away because the workhouse system is said to provide for the poor; ancient endowments for training, clothing, and apprenticing poor children are also swept away, because the ‘Board of Education provides for the poor.’ Thus the various necessities of social life, education, benevolence, etc., are being committed to the hands of officials--i.e., everything is rapidly being thrown upon the rates, until the rates crush the poor into pauperism.

Now, the question of rates is not at first sight an attractive one, particularly to a person who has unusually little talent for arithmetic. But in the present day they take the place of ancient beneficence, and are administered by Town Councils instead of Church organizations. I therefore determined to attend a meeting which was being called to meet the Local Government official, in order to obtain sanction for a new loan. This was my first appearance at a ‘Statutory’ meeting. To my surprise, when I took a seat at the Council Board, I found that I was the only non-official ratepayer present, although the sum to be borrowed was a large one. It was stated that this proposal had received the unanimous assent of the ratepayers. To this statement I was compelled to make a short protest, as I had learned from inquiries that many ratepayers knew nothing about the proposed loan. I was informed that the time for objections had not arrived; and the London official proceeded to inquire into various details of the way in which the loan of six thousand guineas was to be spent, extent of grading, kind of concrete, etc. When all was completely settled I was then requested to state any objection I had to make. I spoke of the burdens of taxation on the poor, and I begged to know what was the present debt of the town. I found that with this new loan our municipal debt would be nearly a quarter of a million. This seemed a very large debt for a small town, where the people found a difficulty in paying their rates, and as a prudent housekeeper I objected to go into debt for our municipal housekeeping. I was informed by the Local Government Board Inspector that ‘that was a question to be settled at the polls.’ So, of course, my single protest was of no practical use. This occurred in August. I then thought that, as the November elections were approaching, it might be useful to try and get municipal questions discussed with the candidates who were to be elected for three years to the Town Council.

The proposed councillor in my parish cordially assented to the proposal I ventured to make to him--viz., that he should meet the ratepayers before the time of the elections, and discuss with them various important questions which would come before the decision of the Town Council. This gentleman willingly promised to attend such a meeting if it were called.

Unfortunately, I could not find any householder willing to aid in such an effort. The following is a type of the responses received from householders:

‘I do not think my presence at a conference would be of any service. I have so little knowledge of municipal affairs, never having attended a meeting since I resided in Hastings.’ The same sort of answer came from busy tradesmen and leisured gentry. It therefore seemed that a more decided educational effort was needed, an effort to show our voters how a Town Council really represented in modern days much of the practical action of the Church in past ages, and that it ought really to present the Theocratic idea--i.e., government by the Highest Good. But here, too, unhappily, I could find no one who did not seem to think that the function of a Town Council was to save them all trouble and responsibility, and that it must be elected on party grounds.

Thus, more and more I recognised the profound character of the disease of indifference, which has become endemic in our municipalities, and the urgent need of remedial measures. I therefore entered into correspondence with the Social and Political Education League, which has borne in succession the honoured names of Professor Seeley and Mr. Froude as Presidents. I received a cordial letter from the honorary secretary, who forwarded a list of 107 names of lecturers, with numerous addresses that they would be willing to deliver. Unfortunately, in this printed list of several hundred lectures I could find nothing that met our special need--viz., short, simple, progressive instruction, inviting questions, ‘on the use of a Town Council and the meaning of a vote.’ I was meditating on what to do when I became most unexpectedly involved in municipal work, where I was compelled to take a prominent part, for which I was not fitted either by knowledge or experience.

At the town meeting in August already referred to, when the addition to the public debt was made, a Corporation Bill was spoken of, which appeared to be of very great importance, and which was to come before the town later. I therefore watched the notices by the church doors, and marked down the date of the Statutory Meeting, which must be called in order to sanction this Bill. I was much surprised not to see attention strongly called to this important measure by the local press and others; but the local politicians were all in such a state of excitement because Hastings was to lose one of its Parliamentary representatives that the way in which municipal affairs were carried on seemed to excite no interest. I called at the Town Clerk’s Office a few days before the meeting to sanction the Bill was to take place, and asked for a copy of the Bill, but was told that there were ‘no copies’ for ratepayers; neither could the Bill be seen. I spoke to about ten persons in the course of the day, but no one knew anything about the Bill. I then wrote to several ratepayers to beg them to attend the Statutory Meeting. One replied that there must be a mistake as to date, naming a meeting three days later, which, being a ‘Party’ meeting on Redistribution, entirely drew attention from the municipal meeting. Another householder consulted a gentleman friend, who told her that the proposed Bill was one to lessen taxation, so there was no need of attending the meeting. I was unable to find a single ratepayer who knew anything about the Bill, or had even heard of it. The time came, a very stormy evening; about seventy persons attended out of over 8,000 ratepayers. No one had seen the Bill, which, from the short abstract given by a Councillor, was evidently of the utmost importance to every class of the inhabitants, and particularly to the industrious classes. It was urged by the Town Council Committee in charge of the Bill that no opposition to it should be made, for two reasons. In the first place, the next day was the last chance of registering the Bill for the present Session of Parliament, and a year would be lost if the Bill were not accepted that night; in the next place, it was stated that any opposition would be very expensive to the town, for, as they had already paid £500 for the expenses of the Bill, and would pay about as much more to complete it, if any opposition were raised it would cost the town some thousands of pounds.

As no other ratepayer seemed to discover any flaw in these statements, I ventured to suggest that, as no one amongst us had seen the Bill, we ought not to sanction it without any opportunity of examination, and that it would be better to lose a Session than do so. I therefore begged to move an adjournment; this was seconded by a ratepayer, but not put to the meeting. The Bill was accepted in the name of the ratepayers by a vote of 47, the Parliamentary agent who directed the proceedings most courteously assuring me that ‘there would be ample time to object to the Bill in London.’ Of course, I knew, and many of the poorer ratepayers present knew, that it would be too late to consider the Bill after it was accepted in our names; but I was struck with the inability of those present to formulate their objections, although much dissatisfaction manifested itself in the meeting. Entire ignorance (in which I fully shared) also existed as to what steps to take in such a case. Had I insisted, as I ought to have done, upon the motion for adjournment being put, it would probably have been rejected by a small majority. But I was utterly ignorant of what was right to do in such a strange position, and it seemed almost unladylike for me alone to oppose the Mayor and Town Council, with their Parliamentary Committee and legal advisers, particularly as it was insisted that opposition meant distrust of the Council, whereas I thought simply of my duty as a ratepayer. I did not know then, and no one present seemed to know, that any ratepayer has a right to demand a poll; and, if insisted on, it must have been allowed. In this case the few pounds it would have cost the town would have been well expended, in delaying what proved to be an exceedingly bad and retrograde Bill. But nothing has struck me more in this singular experience than the utter ignorance of all our otherwise intelligent burgesses as to the steps by which their municipal rights may be guarded, either in the borough or in London. This ignorance seems to arise from the inattention and habit of indifference to municipal duties produced, not only by the pressure of private affairs, but by exclusive absorption in party politics.

As soon as the Corporation Bill was thus nominally accepted by the burgesses, copies of the Bill were allowed to circulate. I saw at once, on scanning this enormous Bill of 243 folio pages, thus sprung upon the town, that it was a very retrograde Bill, and would prove especially tyrannical to the poor. Being fully convinced that a fundamental duty of any community is to guard the industrious poor from being crushed into paupers, I looked at the Bill from that point of view, and was shocked by it. It was drawn up to favour the growth of that modern mistake, a fashionable lodging-house town, by endeavouring to attract rich temporary visitors, instead of promoting permanent productive industry. By its provisions it largely increased the debt of the town; it withdrew expenditure from control of the ratepayers; it provided for a largely-increasing bureaucracy, by placing all the new institutions under officials of the Town Council; it confirmed and established a virtual octroi on coal and the necessaries of life; it introduced the most minute and arbitrary regulations in relation to building, sanitary inspection, police arrests; it re-enacted the obsolete regulation which regards vice as female; and in many other ways it sought to convert the Town Council into masters instead of servants of the people.

I immediately commenced asking individual ratepayers if they had seen this Bill, which interfered with every class of inhabitant. No one had seen it, and later inquiry seemed to prove that not one member even of the Town Council itself had read the Bill carefully through, outside the little Parliamentary Committee who followed the guidance of the London official agent.

I am glad to say that the first note of serious public alarm was sounded by the Medical Profession, who, finding they were to be turned into family spies by this Bill, refused to submit, and, having an organized medical society unanimous in opinion, they commenced an opposition to those objectionable clauses which affected their position. But weeks of precious time were lost before attention was aroused to the generally tyrannical character of the Bill. At last the growing discontent found a voice in an active, enlightened burgess. A crowded public meeting was held, attended largely by the poorer ratepayers, and a committee was formed to see what amendments could be introduced. But there was then not time to examine thoroughly this enormous Bill before it was read in Parliament. Here, again, two circumstances were noteworthy. First of all, the complete indifference of the richer inhabitants to the Bill and to all that involved trouble on their part, with the dread of the poorer inhabitants of the frightful law expenses which opposition would entail.

The second noteworthy point was the utter ignorance of all parties as to the best and exact method of procedure in the various steps necessary to be taken in seeking to amend or oppose the Bill--as, for instance, the times allowed for the various stages, the parties to address, the ways of addressing them, the rights of the burgesses to appear, etc. No one, either layman or lawyer, possessed exact detailed knowledge.

For my part, I sought information at headquarters in London. Here, once for all, I beg to state that nothing can exceed the courtesy and often kindness with which my crude inquiries have always been met by those highest in authority. Indeed, all my life long, though painfully compelled to work against rather than with social conditions, I have always found men eager to help an honest, unselfish worker.

In London I learned some rather surprising facts. These facts may be thus briefly summarized: First, that it is the effect of the action of the Central Government to weaken the Municipalities by encouraging them to run heavily into debt; secondly, that, taking advantage of their weakness, they apparently intend to assume themselves the authority that has hitherto resided in the Municipalities as self-governing communities.

These are very serious facts, not at all due, I think, to any influence exerted by the enlightened heads of Departments, who change with every administration, but to the enormous growing system of permanent officialism, which acts like a tremendous machine, crushing individual freedom, because it naturally seeks to work without friction. The term ‘vortex,’ familiarly applied to the system when any individual interest is drawn into its current, well expresses the terrible power of these official forces.

My first amazement was awakened by the reply to my objection concerning the increased power of borrowing given by our Hastings Bill to a little town of 40,000 inhabitants, that already had a debt of nearly a quarter of a million. ‘What is the rateable value of your town?’ was asked. ‘£300,000.’ ‘And do you consider a quarter of a million a large debt? Why, let me tell you, your town is most fortunate in having such a small debt! Do you not know that Government allows you to borrow to the extent of two years’ annual rating?’

Such was the astounding view taken by a political economist of the duty of Government. I thought of our hundreds of poor ratepayers unable to pay their taxes. I thought of the statistical report that ‘In Great Britain the municipal and other local debts rose in the period of ten years from 84 to 140 millions,’ and I was simply dumb with fear for the future. For I have already seen that power to borrow means encouragement to borrow, and that the municipal purse is not regarded as a Trust, to be more scrupulously guarded than the private purse.

My next discovery related to sanitary and police clauses, and particularly to those which pressed especially upon women. I maintained that there were no such things as good brothels; that they were illegal institutions, to be gradually and steadily suppressed by the growing morality of the people, who should be encouraged by increased facilities to set the law in motion; and that any legal distinction as to bad houses that were ‘a nuisance to the neighbourhood’ was a mischievous distinction. I also pointed out that the term ‘prostitute’ should be entirely struck out of all legislative enactments as an obsolete injustice, and that any necessary checks to growing vice should apply to ‘all persons habitually or persistently’ offending.

These honest suggestions were considered quite impracticable in official circles; but I learned that the Central Government would be quite ready to strike out any unusual local provision in order to take all sanitary and police measures into its own hands.

This appeared to me a most alarming intention. Surely a deadly blow would be struck at individual liberty if all sanitary and police regulations were to be drawn into the ‘vortex.’ The mistakes of municipalities rouse individual conscience, and may be turned to the education of the community; but take away this natural power of growth, and we become a feeble, self-seeking mass, swayed by demagogues, and the slaves of official Bastilles.

I began to understand the wide bearing of a fact that had excited my surprise a short time previously. Scandals occurring in one of our new parks, permission had been obtained from the Local Government Board to place an additional policeman there. Noticing this fact, I asked our Councilman: ‘Why on earth did you consult the Local Government Board about our own policemen? Does not our Watch Committee attend to our police matters?’ He replied: ‘Oh, don’t you know that the Local Government Board pay part of our police expenses?’ Looking over the Borough Accounts for 1884, there, sure enough, I find this police item: Treasury contribution, £1,881 16s. 1d.

Our poor tax-payers cannot pay their rent, so we rob Peter to pay Paul; we get money from the General Government, which all have to contribute to supply, with the idea of lessening local rates, and in return allow the central authorities to interfere with our police. Surely this is selling our birthright for a very deceptive mess of pottage!

As our Town Council became aware of the legitimate discontent which existed respecting the Bill they had sent up to London, with really imperfect knowledge of its contents, they endeavoured with willing courtesy to meet the Ratepayers’ Committee, and at the last moment for legal opposition, certain important amendments were accepted by the Council, which removed the power of arbitrary arrest by the police, and softened some of the other harsh interference with individual rights.

The People’s Committee were compelled to accept these imperfect concessions. The limit of time for opposing the Bill had arrived. No rich or leisured resident showed the slightest concern in this measure. The remark had been made to me by a high London authority: ‘If your townspeople really consider this such a bad Bill, then they have nothing to do but to put their hands in their pockets and raise the money to oppose it.’ This remark shows how little rich people, high in authority, know of the conditions of life in a fashionable lodging-house town. The work of revising this Bill--work necessarily incomplete--had been done by burgesses of moderate means and overwhelmed by private cares, and the time needed for this public work had been stolen from sleep. There was neither possibility of withdrawing a Bill on which much public money had been already expended, nor of raising the heavy sums of money necessary to carry on legal opposition to it.

Thus, a new Corporation Bill of most retrograde character has been forced upon the town--a Bill which greatly strengthens the official or bureaucratic organization, removes much of the control of ratepayers over expenditure, plays into the hands of a centralizing Government, establishes protective duties on the necessaries of life, and vexatiously interferes in various ways with the legitimate personal liberty of the inhabitants.

The latest ‘Battle of Hastings,’ in 1885, has ended in defeat.

This familiar narrative of late experience in one of our little towns is now given for a practical purpose.

A similar course of things appears to be taking place in all our towns, large and small. Unchecked, this neglect of social duty and thoughtless submission to official formalism must steadily deteriorate our national character. It can only be checked by the voluntary organization of individuals who will resolutely battle for the Theocratic principle of human rights against the selfish demagogueism of party strife. The plainest fact in history is the Divine Moral Government of the world. A nation given up to selfishness and lust always degenerates and perishes, and is replaced by new races. This is the great lesson of the ages. We only fail to read it because the method of action of the Creative Power is so much grander and surer than the methods of our individual action. But all that is strongest and noblest in our human nature can be but a faint reflection of what is immeasurably stronger and nobler in the Almighty Creative force. The careful study of our own human needs measured and limited by the needs of all other human beings is the foundation of all growth. This mutual limitation and government of human rights by human duties is Theocracy. It alone can be a permanent form of Government, for a righteous democratic rule must inevitably be Theocratic rule.

If the Churches cannot yet see that the education of the people in their municipal life is the urgent need of the age, if political parties are too corrupt or self-seeking to learn the same lesson, then help must come from other sources. Perhaps women ratepayers not yet entangled in party politics, and men who have risen above them may hear the Divine voice which speaks to them, and may kindle a little sacred fire which will grow into a beacon-light to the nation.

It is now urgently necessary to consider the way in which organizations of householders may be gradually formed in all our municipalities, for the purpose of mutual education and legitimate criticism.

An unofficial organization, sufficiently suited to respond promptly to any sudden municipal call, has really become of vital importance. The animating centre of such organizations must be three or four earnest, unselfish persons (a true Theocratic brotherhood) who will carefully study municipal or social questions, and plan and initiate a work of gradual education, particularly addressed to women voters and our poorer ratepayers. I especially mention women because nothing has been done for their enlightenment as to the new duties laid upon them in 1867. It is a noteworthy fact that when 2,000,000 more men were lately placed on the register, the most active efforts of the Cobden Club and others were at once given to instruct these new voters after party fashion, but no effort whatever has been made directly to instruct the hundreds of thousands of women to whom the municipal vote, the corner-stone of our political system, was given in 1867.

There are questions of policy having a large and important national bearing which need to be studied by united householders. Few persons know clearly what should be the direct action and indirect influence of a Town Council--its duty to resist encroachment by the central government; its duty to encourage the interest and action of burgesses in their own institutions, and to diminish the number of irresponsible officials; its duty to consider the public purse as a solemn trust, and to invite careful study of municipal accounts.

The abolition of obsolete practices, the consideration of changes or adaptation to modern needs of municipal regulations, need consideration by householders.

Few burgesses seem to know that ten ratepayers in a parish possess the right to nominate any one of their fellow ratepayers to represent them for three years on the Town Council. The nominations are now made in secret by party cliques, a practice never intended by our Constitution. This mischievous practice can be directly checked by the liberty of independent action thus provided for. I have already referred to the right to demand a poll at any statutory meeting where serious objection is taken to any proposed measure, a most important guarantee of municipal liberty, quite unknown, apparently, to the majority of ratepayers.

I need not enter upon the important questions of the selection of Poor-law guardians, of members of School Boards, and other officers supposed to be elected by ratepayers, because the same criticism applies to all. At present, indifference to all these important elections prevails unless a sharp contest springs up on party politics. Yet questions really vital to our national welfare are involved in these apparently minor points in our municipal housekeeping, and I believe that the indifference now felt towards our borough elections, when not stimulated by party strife, proceeds from ignorance of these larger relations.

It is in the hope of seeing this great municipal education begun on a large plan, quite above party strife, that I have ventured to refer to this episode of personal experience.

Those who profoundly believe in the moral government of this world, and who would help in establishing a true Theocracy, must seek truth from all sources. Our modern prophets, Herbert Spencer, John Ruskin, and many another seeker for truth, must be earnestly listened to; not as gods, but as men who with human limitations, nevertheless through evil and good report, never swerve from the steadfast unselfish search for truth--men who are enabled to see clearly great aspects of Divine truth, and who can refresh and guide us in our humbler, but providential task. Such men are often the truest followers of our Lord in this nineteenth century.

To all women voters, to all our poorer ratepayers, I earnestly recommend the formation of a union for the study of municipal rights and duties, and I hope that my humble but earnest effort in this direction will enlist the sympathy and guidance of all those truth-seers most able to help us.

FOOTNOTES:

Between four and five hundred summonses for rates this quarter in our little town.

ADDRESS

DELIVERED AT THE OPENING

OF THE

WOMEN’S MEDICAL COLLEGE

OF THE

NEW YORK INFIRMARY, 126, SECOND AVENUE

November 2, 1868

ADDRESS

Our Faculty has kindly insisted upon my saying the first words which our new College addresses to its friends, and I am bound to comply with their desire, although I could have wished that some abler person might have shown the broad significance of those principles which are involved in our work.

True growth is slow (as we measure time) and silent. The tiny sapling shoots up with invisible and noiseless force; so have we worked on--silently. Yet the truest growth has its striking phases of development. We watch with glad anticipation the first tender green of budding foliage; later still we luxuriate in the delicious flowering of the apple-blossoms in May.

It was in 1853, in a parlour in University Place (as some two or three of those now present will remember), that the little slip of a Medical Institution for Women was planted, which slowly grew till it budded into a small hospital in 1857. Many who are here to-night will recall the opening of the hospital wards in Bleecker Street and the cordial words of encouragement then given. They will remember that noble young minister, cut down in his promising youth, who hurried in from his pressing duties in a distant city, carpet-bag in hand, resolved to give us a hearty God-speed, because the good cause was unpopular.

Now the tree has blossomed into a college, and once more the friends gather round to rejoice in its promise of larger usefulness.

It has required fifteen years of patient work--work by faith, for the way has been very dark--to lay the foundation of a college. This has seemed strange to most persons, for many women’s colleges have sprung up meanwhile; hundreds of women have received the physician’s diploma; some have become highly-respected practitioners, and some have gained large sums of money. Of the early friends of the Infirmary, many have died, and some have been discouraged by its slow growth.

It is an easy thing to found a poor college. Our liberal Legislature grants a charter to anyone who asks for it, and an audience can always be gathered together by speeches and music to witness the presentation of learned-looking parchment rolls to a class of well-dressed students; but charter and diploma do not necessarily guarantee the fitting education of a physician. To found a really good college is a work of great difficulty, and up to the present time has been impossible for want of professional assistance--of skilful teachers, and ample clinical provision. To this difficulty has been added another--the want of funds.

We have been facing these two perpendicular cliffs--money and skill--for fifteen years, and striving in every possible way to climb them. Everyone will sympathize with us in relation to the first difficulty, but, at the same time, the promoters of ordinary benevolent enterprises can hardly realize the added difficulty of begging for a principle. People will give to a charity or popular enthusiasm, but very seldom to a principle, more seldom still to such an unpopular idea as the education of women in medicine.

Little by little, however, we have laid one stone upon another, until we have gained a foundation sufficient to stand on. It is small, certainly, but solid, and we all feel great hope of surmounting the first grand difficulty.

In relation to the second obstacle--the want of professional support--I need only refer to the prospectus of our College to show how happily we have at last been able to surmount this second difficulty. How this has been accomplished I really do not know. We are so accustomed to be ‘despised and rejected’ that encouragement, welcome, success, seem unaccountable. It is like breathing a new and delightful atmosphere, which is, nevertheless, strange and dream-like; and one almost fears to wake up with a shock and find again the cold, the gloom, and struggle all around.

But, from whatever cause proceeding, the support now given to the formation of the College is warm and cordial. Should we fulfil the expectations of the wise and experienced physicians who have sanctioned and counselled the formation of this school, professional assistance will be increased to the utmost extent the student may require.

We enter, then, upon this work under the most favourable auspices, and we are encouraged to undertake it by the earnest request of medical women from every part of the country. From the east and the west, from California to Maine, have come the same heartfelt expressions of interest in the establishment of a sound plan of education, the same hope that other women may not enter upon their work under the disadvantages of imperfect preparation that they have had to contend with. The list of excellent women physicians who have enrolled themselves as fellows of the College shows the trust which is felt in this undertaking by our respected co-workers.

We have endeavoured to follow out the suggestions of our most experienced medical teachers, and incorporate the following features into our plan of instruction:

1. A three years’ college course.

2. A larger proportion of time devoted to teaching and practical instruction than to lecturing.

3. A progressive succession of studies.

I shall only refer at this time to one of these--viz., the three years’ college course. I would remark, for the information of those who are not familiar with medical tuition, that the Legislature, in granting to a school the right to confer the degree of Doctor in Medicine, requires that such degree shall only be given to those who have been studying medicine for three years. Three years, then, is the obligatory time of study, and no degree is legal which is granted on a less term of study. But in the ordinary course of instruction the greater part of that time is spent in private reading, the College being only responsible for the instruction of two winter sessions of five months each; in other words, for ten months out of the thirty-six required by law. The remaining twenty-six months may or may not be well spent; it depends upon the intelligence, resolution, and opportunities possessed by each individual student. It is the great wish of the profession to increase the collegiate part of instruction, and require attendance at college during a portion of each of the three years of study. Many colleges have added spring and autumn courses, but the attendance of students is not obligatory, and it seems impossible to lengthen the college course without united action.

For women there exist so very few opportunities for profitable study that these precious twenty-six months are, to a great extent, wasted. At the same time a weighty responsibility rests upon all those who introduce women into medicine to see that they are fitted to fulfil the trust worthily. Medicine is a learned and confidential profession, and should draw into its ranks the most highly educated, the most irreproachable in character. This most noble profession, like all high things, is susceptible of the worst abuse. The good which women may accomplish in medical practice is also the measure of the evil that they may do. Education, long and careful, should be the safeguard of society in this matter. From many causes women are peculiarly exposed to a great temptation--that of practising ignorantly and superficially. The College should foresee this danger, and provide the long and careful training which can alone discriminate between the worthy and unworthy candidate. This education, while it sifts out the incompetent, will give to the earnest student those advantages of drill, of substantial knowledge, of professional support, without which women enter upon the practical work of medicine under the most cruel disadvantages.

We propose, therefore, to adopt the most advanced plan of instruction, and have arranged a progressive course of study which will require for its completion attendance at college during three winter sessions of five months each, which we hope eventually to be able to extend to eight months. We shall thus be able not only to give to each student an additional term of systematic instruction, with all those advantages of hospital practice which belong only to a large city, but we shall be able to keep her under college influence during the remainder of each year, directing the intermediate studies, and forming much more accurate acquaintance than were otherwise possible, with the qualifications of each candidate for graduation.

We are compelled to face many difficulties by this plan. We must anticipate a smaller class at first in consequence of the additional expense laid upon the student, for however low the price of tuition may be made, the added expense of boarding has to be met. The student also, at the outset of her career, is unable to appreciate the great advantages of this enlarged instruction, and is naturally tempted to go where a diploma may most easily be gained. We are quite sure, however, that in a few years the thorough education given by our College, and the distinction conferred by its diploma, will draw to it the best students from every part of our country.

There is one other feature of our College that I must allude to, as I feel in it a profound and special interest: it is the introduction of hygiene into our course as a prominent and obligatory study.

It seems strange that the prevention of disease should not always have engaged the thought and instruction of the guardians of the public health at least as fully as the cure of disease, and yet I believe that this is the first college in America to found a chair of hygiene. Consider the subjects involved in the development of a healthy human organization--a healthy race. Physical and moral training; the inheritance and transmission of qualities; the peculiarities of individual constitution; the nature and influences of climate, soil, food and customs; the prevention of epidemics; the municipal regulations of our cities, etc.--all these subjects come directly and unavoidably into the department of hygiene. Surely every student who receives the degree of Doctor should be thoroughly acquainted with all that Science at present knows on these subjects. How else can he fulfil his noblest trust--the guardianship of individual and public health? For a specialist with a narrowed range of duties such knowledge may, perhaps, be of less importance; but for the family physician, the trusted friend and counsellor year after year--for the public-spirited physician who would give to his wisdom and experience the largest usefulness, these studies are indispensable, and his initiation, his first impulse and interest in this knowledge, should surely be given by his college.

There is one branch of this subject which I think must weigh heavily on the hearts of women physicians, and which will, I hope, through them, engage the attention of every thoughtful woman in our land--I refer to the frightful mortality of young children. Children are born to live, not die. There is a wonderful force of tenacious vitality in all growing organizations--far more proportionate vitality than in the old or even the adult; yet, notwithstanding this beneficent provision of nature, we destroy our young children nearly five times as fast as the other members of our social body. If every woman in our city could hear the daily moan of these dying infants, could feel that every day multitudes of bereaved mothers were weeping over untimely graves, and that her own skirts were not clear of this shedding of innocent blood, we should see an army of earnest co-workers eager to save this multitude of helpless children.

Infancy and early childhood are the especial charge of women, and how do they fulfil this trust? It does not do to look around upon a well-furnished home, bright with the smiling faces of happy children, and say, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Each one is his brother’s keeper to the direct extent that knowing an evil can be cured, he refrains from doing his part to cure it. Did the women of our city resolve to save these children they might be saved. Year by year the mortality might be lessened by the sanitary knowledge diffused by women, and the sanitary regulations their influence might establish, until from their own little circle they could look with joy to a bright cloud of witnesses beyond--thousands of useful lives saved to their homes and their country through their aid!

This suggestion of important practical usefulness will give force to the great principle involved in our College--scientific training for women.

Interest in natural objects, careful, comprehensive observation of them, enthusiasm for unselfish and impersonal ends, are the main principles of scientific study--principles that would enter with invigorating force into the mental development of every girl, that would regenerate the life of women.

Science is no hard dry thing as some imagine; it is the earnest study of this wonderful world around us. It will take the form of each individual mind. In a narrow unimaginative nature it will seem hard and dry; in a warm and loving nature it will flow into every form of benevolent action. It might work a most beneficent change in the relation that we all consider most sacred--the relation of a mother to her children.

The immense force of habit, second only to the original type of constitution, and often overpowering even the original tendencies, is, nevertheless, formed by the silent working of influences, hour by hour and day by day, that are invisible and cannot be measured; that seem absolutely valueless, taken item by item, in the long account, and yet in the aggregate they will save or ruin the body and soul. A mother may instil the love of reading or the love of dress; she may form the habit of out-door exercise or the habit of gossip not by the set precept or even formal regulations, but by her own tastes unavoidably moulding the tastes of her children, and flowing out naturally into these external arrangements that inevitably reflect the ruling spirit or affections of the individual. Did the mother possess a hearty interest in the wonders of field and forest, of sea and sky, what a treasury of delightful intercourse might be found in the varied environs of our city! A mother’s love joined to the broad tastes and knowledge would never weary of the ceaseless questioning of childhood; the older the child, the closer and more influential would be the companionship. The holiday by the sea-side or amongst the mountains, so wasted now in idleness and frivolity, might be a rich harvest-time of delightful knowledge drawn from the treasures of land and water.

It is, then, because of the great value that enthusiasm for natural science would be to woman, value to the individual life, to the home life, and to society, that I think this College will owe its greatest interest. From the fact that it is a Medical College it will derive its practical efficiency in cultivating a taste for science.

A lady, now world-famous, once said to me before she began her noble career: ‘We Englishwomen can study anything under the sun that we desire to acquire. Not the slightest obstacle is placed in the way of our becoming learned to any extent; but any attempt to turn the knowledge to account, to work with it, is met with the bitterest opposition, is ridiculed, sneered at, frowned down. Yet the greatest impetus to study, the natural issues of study, lie in some noble career.’

It is from this tendency of human mind to pour its knowledge into some definite form that our Medical College, with its broad practical uses, may prove so valuable as a centre for scientific study. As it becomes older and stronger it will spread into those collateral branches as botany, zoology, comparative anatomy, which will form so many points of union for the professional and non-professional. Classes would naturally form in connection with it for nursing, sanitary visiting, for botanical and other excursions. There is no limit to its practical usefulness if the spirit that animates it be earnest, truthful, and intelligent.

We enter, then, upon our college work with a bright hope that stretches beyond the college walls into the homes and cities around; into the higher civilization of the future as well as the present.

Our excellent Faculty, in entire accordance with these views, commence their patient and laborious work with a sustained enthusiasm which recognises the difficulties in our way, but is resolved to conquer them. They share the large and liberal views of modern medicine. They belong to no ‘pathy,’ to no narrow and bigoted sect. They are members of that great catholic community of science which, from the ‘Father of Medicine’ onwards, in every age and country, under the most diverse practical forms, has sought for truth through observation, experiment and calm deduction; has proved all things, and held fast to that which is good.

We invite the co-operation of all in this noble work. Especially do we invite the co-operation of women. United action is of immense importance in so arduous an undertaking as this. We will do everything in our power to conciliate diverse interests. Principle only must not be sacrificed. The College must be an honest and earnest attempt to give to women the very highest education that modern science will afford. It is on this ground that union must take place. This school is the only one that the profession has confidence in, the only one it has sanctioned. It has laid its broad foundation by fifteen years of patient work, and it will quickly rise into an edifice of noble proportions if all friendly helpers will unite in its construction.

THE RELIGION OF HEALTH

A Lecture delivered in 1871

THE RELIGION OF HEALTH

The words ‘the Religion of Health’ convey a profound meaning to the physician who has spent a lifetime in relieving physical suffering. I will try and state what those words seem to me to imply.

Obedience to Divine law is the highest wisdom of the human race.

Wherever God’s laws are clearly visible, stamped in immutable characters so plain that every human being who is willing to read them can do so, then the wisdom, the happiness--nay, the simple common-sense of the race--lies in obeying them. The first lesson every one of us has to learn profoundly is his subjection to law. There is no escaping this inexorable destiny. Although each one is born with free-will, his type--the plan and pattern of his being--is born with him also. This type is a limitation to the nature, but it is also a guide; it is the finger of Providence showing him the road to follow in the great wilderness of creation; it is the Divine order, according to which each one can freely grow and expand in body and soul to the finest proportions. True freedom consists in the voluntary choice of this type, in the full acceptance of all its conditions, and in the endeavour to unfold its capacities. The will may refuse this type, may deny the laws that govern it, may seek for license in a lawless rejection of Divine order, but it is soon arrested by endless obstacles, and persistence in the unequal struggle will only end in degradation and self-destruction.

We recognise a Divine law when we see it existing age after age unchangeably, carrying order and beauty in its fulfilment; penalties, discord, desolation, with infringement. These laws are grand in design, beneficient in their effects--equally so, whether we observe the marvel of parental love, or explore the wonders of the skies; whether we clothe them in warm, human garments, indispensable to the simple, loving heart, or frame them in the clear precision of scientific formulæ, indispensable to the truthful mind.

If there be one law that all can clearly recognise in the existence of the material world around us, it is the unvarying method of human development from infancy to old age. A certain plan exists, according to which the infant expands through childhood and youth into manhood, and thence changes through elderly life into old age.

This plan never varies in any epoch, or race, or country. It is the same for the lowest savage tribe as for the most cultivated race. No effort of ours can change this unvarying sequence in human life.

This is a wonderful fact. It is so common that we hardly notice it. Yet it is wonderful, because it is so common--so common as to be universal. It rises, as we regard it, into the dignity of Law.

Reverence for this unity of life increases the more carefully this strange fact, called the human body, is studied, the more fully we understand what it is that thus remains unchanged age after age. We speak of the body as if it were a single, simple thing, to be used as a tool and then laid aside; but its complicated structure is a little world in itself. As a machine, it is such a model of compactness and ingenuity that no human skill can approach its perfection. It possesses a twofold life--a life for itself as well as a life for our use. In its own proper life it carries on a thousand curious operations necessary for its growth and maintenance, quite independent of our volition or consciousness. It contains extensive manufactories full of complicated and delicate machinery for the production of sugar, milk, acids, alkalies, salts; it has storehouses of iron, lime, and other chemical substances; there are magazines where it lays up supplies against a time of scarcity; it has its refiners and scavengers; apparatus for warming and ventilating; it has pumps and propellers constantly at work, and a more perfect electrical apparatus than has ever been invented. All these remarkable operations are directed by intelligence, working according to a plan, and combining these manifold energies for one purpose--viz., the maintenance, during a certain period, of a healthy human body. Besides this independent existence of its own, the body possesses a life of relation, by means of which it is fitted to the uses of individual and social existence. Its powers of locomotion, its active senses, its faculty of feeling, its wonderful human hand, and its still more wonderful human brain, all belong to this other use of the body as an instrument for the expression of intelligence and emotion.

Equally remarkable is the system of general unvarying laws by which this living structure is governed. The first law we notice in human growth is the precedence of physical over mental growth. We observe that physical development, though never separate from mental development, is always in advance of it. This is shown by the wonder and delight with which the parent receives the first sign of awakening intelligence in the young infant, the first smile, the first indication of observation. It is the awakening mind. But every physical function essential to life has been perfectly performed from the first moment of birth as perfectly, according to its wants, as it will ever be performed throughout life. This precedence of physical life continues throughout the whole period of growth, though it strikes us less as the years roll on, and the mind gradually assumes that mastery over the body which should be the condition of adult life. The brain is the last part of the body to cease growth. Every other organ is perfectly formed, every bone consolidated, the physical organization complete, while the mind, with its necessary organ of expression, is still growing. I place this important fact first amongst the rules which govern the human economy because it strikes the key-note of education; and it is only through a thorough appreciation of this principle that we shall beneficially change our present systems of education.

Each age has its own special method of existence; thus there are laws for growth, for maturity, for decay. There are the great facts of growth by exercise or use; the necessity of maintaining a just distribution of force amongst the various parts, lest one grow at the expense of another; the alternations of action and rest required in every part of the economy; the varied life of different functions which give to each its individuality and special rule; the varieties of race, of temperament, of individual peculiarities--these will slightly indicate the extent and variety of these unchanging laws by which our human nature is moulded. Their importance may be realized more fully by dwelling for a moment on one or two of them.

What may be termed the balance of power or just distribution of force in the various parts of our physical and mental nature--according to each individual type--is essential to the perfection of the organization--it is, indeed, the measure of health. It is attained and preserved by the due exercise of all the functions of our nature. In ascertaining what is this due exercise, we observe that the different functions of the human being are subject to varying laws of constant or occasional action. The higher the object of a function, the wider is its scope, the longer are the intervals of rest required, and the more direct is its subjection to reason; it is taken from under the control of the automatic vegetative life of the body and placed under the direction of the central authority--Reason--Conscience. Thus, we see the lungs, whose sole object is the physical life of the individual, breathing day and night unceasingly, with alternate rest and action every moment. The digestive apparatus, with longer intervals of rest and a wider range of objects, connected with the preparation and enjoyment of food. The senses, with their great use both to the individual and to society, locked in slumber every night. Thus, step by step, the plan rises to the highest functions of human nature--those which concern the race--which, above all others, are under the dominion of reason, and not subject to that law of constant action which controls the lower functions.

Equally interesting is that law of our nature which determines growth by exercise. It is a fact clearly demonstrated by modern science that the governing organ of the human body, the brain, has distinct portions of its structure devoted to the service of distinct faculties of the mind. Thus the intellectual, the emotional, and the locomotive powers work through corresponding portions of the highly organized brain. Each faculty grows by exercise. Not only does the mental faculty become stronger by use, but its physical organ of expression in the brain, with its dependencies in the rest of the body, become larger and stronger with a richer supply of blood and greater aptitude for instantaneous action. This condition of the physical organ reacts upon the mind, which takes greater pleasure in acting in a certain direction when it finds the brain so keenly responsive to its impulses. If the proper distribution of force is disturbed in any individual by the neglect to exercise important portions of our nature, an antagonism of faculties springs up, one part growing at the expense of another part. Thus the emotional may destroy the intellectual life in an individual who is subjected to undue excitement of the passions, particularly if the type of the nature is not largely emotional. The other faculties will rapidly lose their power. The intellect suffers, judgment is lost, and mental confusion produced, which is really a species of insanity. Those organs of the body, also, which are most intimately connected with the excited portion of the brain become involved, and their functions may be entirely deranged. The automatic power of the human body may also assume undue control in those who yield to fancies and caprice, and lead an unnatural and sedentary life. There is an antagonism between this automatic force and the life of relation or brain-life of the individual. The more the balance of powers is lost in the human brain--reason being no longer the controlling force--the greater becomes the power of this instinctive life of the body, the greater its capability of answering every fanciful suggestion, and even of exciting those suggestions. The individual may thus become the sport of his own unbalanced faculties, and a prey to every species of morbid hallucination.

An organization so complicated (as this human body), designed for such manifold uses, and at the same time drawing the elements of its existence from the external world, must be powerfully influenced by all the circumstances which surround it. Certain physical and mental conditions are essential to human growth, to health. Hence the question of food and clothing, of drainage and ventilation, of human habitations, of exercise and occupations, attain equal importance and dignity, as essential to the fulfilment of the great changeless plan of life.

Thus we are brought face to face with a great fixed fact, a fact which concerns every human being during every moment of life--viz., God’s unchanging law of human growth. This law we are called on to study, to obey, and obedience to it is placed first in the order of human duties. Obedience can only be rendered by study of the objects of physical life, of its structure, its conditions, its rules. Its learning, thus regarded, becomes sacred learning, and ignorance is criminal.

The folly and wickedness of our practical contempt for the great laws of human growth may be measured by the penalties of suffering, illness, and premature death attached to this neglect. This is rendered more striking by observing, first of all, the great force of the principle of vitality, the strong tendency to live and resist injurious influences, which we all possess. Nothing is more remarkable in the history of the human race than its great power of adaptability. Scattered all over the surface of the globe, under the most varying conditions, men still live and thrive. The cities of Cuença and Quito, at a height of 9,600 feet above the level of the sea, possess large and flourishing populations; so also do the cities of Holland and New Orleans, which lie below its level. Multitudes of workmen live in the galleries of the deepest mines, many hundred feet below the surface of the earth, deprived of light, breathing air much more condensed, living under a much stronger pressure than that of the ordinary atmosphere. And, on the other hand, scientific observers have taken up their residence for a long period on the crest of Pichincha, at an elevation of 14,826 feet. Agassiz spent some weeks in investigations on the Jung-Frau. Gay Lussac attained the highest elevation ever reached by man in his balloon, 28,000 feet. All can recall the thrilling narratives of Arctic voyagers, where the thermometer has been known to measure 91° below zero. Contrast this with the burning sun of India, where 120° Fahrenheit is observed; where glass is cracked by the heat. A wide range of more than 200° of temperature, and yet the heat of the human body maintains its steady and necessary amount, never materially varying under the two extremes. Similiar illustrations of the power of human nature to adapt itself to unnatural conditions might be drawn from all the other elements necessary to life.

Notwithstanding this remarkable power of vitality, which can brave such extreme variations in physical conditions and endure enormous privations, careful observation all over our country presents a fearful record of death, sickness, and physical degeneration produced by our own social arrangements--arrangements and habits so destructive to the human organization that they overpower even this great capability of adaptation.

This is seen in the statistics of our towns, in the condition of our peasant population, in our social and domestic experience.

The statistics of all our large towns demonstrate the great and unnatural destruction of life that takes place in these centres of civilization, where the highest medical skill is found, and placed freely at the call of poor as well as rich. The natural death-rate at present is 17 per thousand--i.e., that under the most favourable conditions as amongst the upper classes in our healthiest cities, in the healthiest country districts, 17 out of every thousand persons die each year all the world over, a lower mortality being exceptional; but the following was the death-rate of our chief cities (1868) instead of the natural rate of 17 per thousand: Bristol, 23; London and Birmingham, 24; Dublin, 25; Edinburgh, 27; Liverpool, 29; Glasgow, 30; Manchester, 32. That means that in London alone, in a year of no special sickness, more than 21,000 were killed who ought to have lived. In the British Islands an army of over 176,516 lives were swept off unnecessarily. This is not all: a much larger proportion of the population is always ill at one time; about 78,000 in London is reckoned, of whom one-third are suffering from preventable diseases. This calculation does not take into account those feeble, ailing persons who are never more than half well, who lack strength and energy for the daily fulfilment of duty. It is shown that in the whole of England the people have only a mean life-time of forty-one years--not half the term of life that seems to belong naturally to our race. Of those who died within the year, over 134,000 were in ripe manhood; but yet more noteworthy are the deaths under the age of twenty-five: over 242,000 perished in childhood and youth. The wholesale slaughter of children in our civilized country is truly appalling. Out of 233,515 deaths at all ages, 94,804, or 40·60 per cent., were those of children under five years of age.

To understand fully the grave import of these records three facts must be noted: first, that the death-rate of a country is always under-stated; second, that town populations increase at a much more rapid ratio than country populations; third, that the death-rate increases in direct proportion to the density of the population.

In proof of these three propositions let me quote from recent testimony of our most eminent statisticians:

‘Wherever the population is increasing the amount of mortality is under-rated in consequence of there being an excess of young people in those numbers, which make the mortality appear lower than it really is. The mortality of London appears much less by statistics than it actually is; it is reduced in two ways by having a large influx of persons at the period of age when mortality is low, and by the departure and return of patients to the country to die, as consumptives for instance. The causes of disease in London are excessively active, as is seen, for instance, in the mortality of male children under five years of age, which is about 8 per cent. (i.e., 80 per 1,000), while in some of the more healthy districts it is not more than 4 per cent.’ Again: ‘Of the 20,066,224 persons enumerated in England in 1861, nearly 11,000,000 were in the towns and 9,000,000 in villages and country around the towns. The total population in London and 71 of the largest towns in England was over 7,667,622, and the population in the country and in smaller towns was over 12,398,602, so that there are nearly eight-twentieths of the population in those 72 towns. The total increase from 1801 to 1861 in the population of England was over 11,173,688, and one-half of that increase was in those 72 towns. It will thus be apparent that the town population is increasing at a much more rapid rate than the country population.’ ‘The country population now is very nearly the same as it was in 1801. By a law, which at present is quite constant, the mortality increases rapidly with the density of the population. In our thinnest districts the mortality is about 15 per 1,000; in our densest districts it ranges from 28 to 33. This relation is a constant law: where there are 179 persons to a square mile, there the mortality is from 17 to 19; where the density of population varies from 3,000 upwards, the mortality ranges from 26 to 33; so that under our present arrangements there is a constant connection between the density of population and its mortality. That connection is not necessary; our towns might be made nearly as healthy as these country districts, having a mortality of 17 to 20.’ Of the circumstances under which large masses of our population grow up, another distinguished physician writes: ‘They create special diseases, demoralize the population, and in course of generations completely overthrow the physique of the people. It is impossible to walk through the central streets (of this large town) without observing that you are in contact with a population awfully degraded, both in its physical and moral attributes; a population whose mere external characteristics impress you at once with the idea of a depth of degradation of bad habits growing for generations, in consequence of these arrangements.’ ‘Thousands and hundreds of thousands are thus brought up.’

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.

One of the most important problems of the present time is how to embody the sanitary knowledge which we possess in the life of the nation so that a higher standard of health may be gained by the present and succeeding generations.

The solution of this great problem must be attempted in many directions. It must be sought in the power of legislative action, in the wide-spreading influence of education, and in the strength of social combination.

The part which legislation should take in promoting national health demands serious consideration. Legislation is the human imitation, or visible representation, of the greatest facts in the universe--law, and it derives from this representative character its immense power in moulding the mind and habits of a people; for, as the Divine laws of the human organization limit its powers and direct its modes of action, so the human laws which rule a people determine their modes of thought and their relations to one another. Legislation, therefore, not only represents the life of the present generation, but is the most powerful educator of the rising generation. Every law contains this latent power hidden within it, and so often overlooked. In every subject of legislation, whether it be the most trifling village regulation or the gravest international question, there are principles hidden behind the facts which induced legislation, and it is the attitude that legislation assumes towards those hidden principles, which stamps its character as good or evil, which makes the human law obedient or disobedient to Divine law.

The health of a nation is a most important concern of a wise government. No other agency can act with such extensive and combined power. But much wise caution is needed in dealing with such a subject as national health. Human agencies are very imperfect, and much has to be learned as to the right way of dealing with most important subjects of health legislation. If the authorities introduce a supply of pure water into a village suffering from typhoid fever they do a righteous thing. They deal with causes. By careful investigation they have collected a body of facts which prove that impure water will produce typhoid fever. In this act of introducing a supply of good water there are many principles enfolded. Thus they destroy the cause of a great evil; they express approbation of that good thing--pure water; they educate the people into liking it; they show them, through experience, the blessings that flow from it. They thus render obedience to Divine law by their legislation. But it is very different if they attempt to regulate a village gin-shop. Gin, as a drink, is always bad, whether adulterated or not, and, in dealing with the greatest evil that afflicts our country--the curse of drink--legislation must adopt the same course that it did for typhoid fever: it must patiently and persistently accumulate the facts which will show what produces this dangerous disease of drinking.

Divine law rewards the good (i.e., the obedient), punishes the bad (i.e., the disobedient), swiftly, surely, inexorably, no matter at what cost or pain; and human law must never temporize with evil, neither directly nor indirectly sanction it, or it loses its character of law and becomes simply blind or blundering expediency. In dealing with evils legislation is bound to investigate the causes of evil and attack them. Herein lies the superiority of legislative over individual effort--that it is able to accumulate that body of varied facts through which causes can be clearly ascertained and the attention of the community directed to them. It is only on this sound basis that wise legislative measures can be framed; only in this way that great questions of national health can be judiciously dealt with.

Our English Government--in advance of every other nation--is learning to recognise this great function of legislation, and is gradually accumulating such a storehouse of facts as will render comprehensible measures of wise statesmanship possible. The mass of the people, however, must become sufficiently intelligent to support such measures. The difficulties which now stand in the way of health improvements from want of this intelligence, are inconceivable to those who have not considered the subject. No matter whether the health improvement suggested be great or small--whether it be the redemption of a lovely mountain river, whose sparkling waters have been turned into a black source of pollution, or a swamp that ought to be drained, or a poor cottage that needs the introduction of fresh air--there is always the same opposition and misconception. Thus a short-sighted view of expense will excite furious opposition from small ratepayers and ignorant farmers, even to the most necessary measures--measures which would rapidly diminish the poor-rates and increase the prosperity of a place. Incompetent men or poorly paid men are appointed to carry out Health Acts, or timid men, afraid to excite ill-will in the neighbourhood. The Acts thus become a dead-letter, or lawsuits are instituted against improvements, harassing and even destroying local health boards. Large proprietors enclose the commons, farm out their estates to agents, and thus neglect the duties which are inseparable from rights. The same ignorance which opposes such endless obstacles to the establishment of sanitary improvements often defeats the best laid plans when they are carried out, and proves, if proof were necessary, that a people must be educated to appreciate laws before the objects which those laws were intended to effect can be accomplished.

Much confusion also at present arises from patch-work legislation that has not been based on sound principles. This is shown by the present Acts regulating towns: ‘A recent edition of the laws affecting health and sanitary affairs gives the text of fifteen Acts relating to health, diseases prevention, nuisances, local government, sewage, and kindred subjects; twelve Acts consolidating provisions as to towns, lands, markets, police, loans, bakehouses, etc. The public health and local government supplemental Acts are twenty-nine in number, while the laws treated by the work are affected by not less than 296 public general statutes, which the author tabulates in the index as being referred to in the text. No lawyer can grasp these enactments save by great research, much less can a man who has his own business affairs to look after.’

The sanitary investigations carried on by the Privy Council and other government bodies, the labours of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the condition of the poor, etc., cannot be overestimated; but none feel more strongly than the very men who are carrying on these measures the necessity of effort in other directions--directions where the co-operation of every member of society is needed--viz., in education and in domestic and social life.

We now possess enough sanitary knowledge to reform the physical and moral condition of the human race if it were generally diffused and its rules systematically applied. Scientific investigations and the knowledge of hygienic laws are far in advance of the practices of daily life. The knowledge is within our reach, which, if employed, would save the lives of tens of thousands of human beings around us, keep this army of sick in vigorous health, and make our homes the precious centres of ennobling influence that they are intended to be. We fail, however, in the means of diffusing and putting into practice the substantial knowledge which scientific observation has laid before us. The first duty, therefore, which rests upon us all is an endeavour to secure the universal diffusion of sanitary knowledge. As every human being in the British Isles should know how to read and write, so every human being should be taught that health is a duty, and shown how to secure it. Sanitary teaching (varying, of course, in its style) should be introduced into every school and college in the kingdom--in the common school, in Oxford and Cambridge equally, into every series of lectures, whether at the Royal Institution or the South Kensington Museum, into every Working Man’s Institute, and into every medical and every theological seminary.

Above all other classes of men, it is certainly important that physicians and medical men generally should be thoroughly educated in sanitary knowledge. The authority which they possess, and their opportunities for instilling this knowledge when families are keenly alive to the dangers of illness, would give them greater success as health missionaries than any other class of society. But medical men are not taught that it is equally their duty to prevent disease as to cure it; and their attention is not, therefore, sharpened to observe and to deprecate the numerous habits in family life which tend to produce disease. There are but two chairs of hygiene established in connection with our medical schools, and attendance upon those lectures is not obligatory--i.e., is not essential to the attainment of a degree. Every practical instructor knows that the press of studies is so great that the student always neglects whatever is not absolutely necessary to his success. One of the most beneficial changes that could be introduced into medical education would be the establishment of hygiene as a first-class chair, of equal importance with anatomy, a searching examination in its teachings being indispensable to the attainment of any degree which gives authority to attend the sick. Almost equally important is the introduction of sanitary instruction into theological seminaries. The clergy generally seem to be sadly ignorant of the laws of health. The powerful and legitimate influence which they exercise would be more valuable if it were not so one-sided. If the clergy all over the land, who command a mighty army of parish visitors, could show those visitors the direct and positive connection between pure blood (made out of food, light, and air) and pure thought, what a revolution would be wrought in every country village! But the clergy themselves must be educated in such knowledge, for it is not simply intellectual assent, but a thorough realization of it that is necessary. The same knowledge is as necessary to our schoolmasters. No one is fit to direct the education of youth who does not perceive the difference between the young and the old, and suit education to the child’s nature and not to his own. The kind of studies, their variety, frequent movement, and change, the arrangement of schoolrooms, the unlimited supply of fresh air, the playground, etc., must all be based upon an acquaintance with sanitary knowledge, which would be a proper subject for examinations and certificates.

The education of children and youth in Health is a subject in which women are especially concerned. It is a large subject; it demands not only the introduction of sound sanitary instruction suitable for different ages into all our schoolrooms and colleges, but the creation of a love of such knowledge and the habit of its practical application. But this is not all: our great need--education in Health--implies the confirming and improving the health by means of education. It is not sufficient that the course of studies laid down for children and youth should not injure them--it is also necessary that it should do them positive physical good; they should be stronger, better, and brighter for the hours spent in technical education, or there is something wrong in the plan of education. If lessons produce headache, lassitude, inactivity of functions, if they make children pale, quiet, spiritless, then the lessons are bad; they have done the children an injury, no matter how slight the evil effect appears to be each day; and the injury cannot be remedied by sending them out to play and repeating the same process day after day. A wrong cannot be made right by constantly committing it and then endeavouring to repair it. It cannot be too strongly urged that, unless the plan of education adopted with children does them a positive physical good in all its details, it does them a positive physical harm; it cannot be neutral. This is also true of the youth in college or boarding-school. The same principle is applicable: if the course of study is not positively beneficial to the bodily organization, it is positively injurious. The over-taxed brain cannot be righted by boating and cricketing. The rules which apply to the fully-formed adult organization do not apply to the growing youth, and it could be clearly shown how much moral, as well as physical, harm arises from our failure to recognise the radical difference between the youthful and adult natures.

Education in Health, therefore--not simply theoretic instruction--is what we need to make our children stronger; and it requires such a reverence for health on the part of educators that there shall be a constant endeavour to make every part of instruction strengthen the physical as well as mental nature.

In seeking the best means of imparting sanitary instruction to youth we find that a certain preparation is necessary before anything like a full and direct hygienic education can be given. This preparation must be laid in childhood. A knowledge of the structure and functions of the human body is indispensable; yet young women generally shrink with repugnance from physiological instruction for which they have not been prepared. All reference to bodily functions is unpleasant to them. They have never learned to respect the laws of their organization, and they turn from the subject of physical structure as very repugnant, or a great bore. The tastes of children, however, are of a very different character; the intellect, as shown in untiring curiosity and incessant questioning, is predominant in childhood, and taste for any study may then be formed. Children will receive the elements of comparative and human anatomy and physiology, learn to handle bones and examine structure, not only without disgust, but with extreme interest; and they may thus be prepared for the fuller instruction which they should receive as youths. Everything should be done to cultivate the taste for natural history and science that is latent in almost every child. Their fondness for animals indicates this taste, and the care of animals should be encouraged and directed. The manual of physiology in every schoolroom should be pleasantly written, well printed, and with abundant illustrations. Bright, well-drawn pictures, clean and fresh specimens, shelves and little boxes for collections, should be provided.

To the intellectual training which results in the formation of tastes the formation of healthy habits of life must be added. These habits should be formed without, in general, giving any reason for them. Children should not be taught to reason on matters of Health. They utterly lack the power of proportion which is essential to reason, and they run the risk of becoming morbidly conscientious or hypochondriacal if compelled to reason on these practical matters. It is very important that they should go to sleep early, eat simple food, live in fresh air, and take a great deal of out-door exercise, but it is not desirable that they should know too early why they do these things. The proper time for reasoning on these habits has not arrived, but the healthy habits early formed will gradually become a part of their nature. Habits of self-control and obedience to rules are also an essential part of the moral hygiene of childhood; they prepare the nature for the intelligent obedience to law which should come in later years. Children should not be worried with unimportant observances. The precepts which it is necessary to give them will make more impressions if they are not too numerous; the rules laid down must be wise rules; children are trustful, and their trust must never be abused. If, as they grow older, they learn to recognise the wisdom of the obedience that has been exacted, they will escape that dangerous scepticism which so often comes to youth, who find that their intellectual and moral guides have cheated their youthful trust. Intellectual tastes, healthy habits, and obedience to law being thus formed in childhood, the youth is prepared for that full instruction in health which is adapted to the period where reason is developed.

For the education of youth in health--i.e., in physical strength--and in sanitary knowledge and habits a training college seems to be urgently needed. The acquisition of knowledge, enthusiasm for the study, and a practical realization of it must go hand in hand. Modifications may doubtless be gradually introduced into the ordinary plan of family and school instruction. But if, under the present system of schoolroom discipline, we attempt to instruct young ladies in the laws of health, we are called on to contend with insurmountable obstacles, not only with an utter indifference to all subjects of health and repugnance to many topics connected with it, but with enfeebled powers from a neglected or misdirected childhood, and with vitiated tastes from the substitution of artificial excitements for natural healthy enjoyments; it is also impossible to find the necessary number of teachers inspired with that respect for Divine laws which would give them insight into matters of health and the true order of education. This combination of difficulties makes the task of education in health almost a hopeless one, unless the individual be placed in a fresh educational atmosphere where the objects and methods of education are entirely changed. Health education should train the body--of which the brain forms part--into well-balanced strength, giving full command of the various faculties and power to meet the demands of future life. To accomplish this work the hearty co-operation of the individual is essential; such education cannot be forced from without: it must be accepted by the will. All the mixed motives which act upon human nature are needed to vanquish indifference and excite enthusiasm: large and beautiful arrangements in building and grounds; the sympathy of numbers; the stimulus of honours and rewards; the increased prospect of establishment in life. All the motives which act upon young men, stimulating their zeal in college life, are also needed by young women. The natures, if not identical, are strictly parallel. The broad rules applicable in one case are applicable in the other, and success in education can only be attained when it is adapted to the one common human nature.

Education in health would be best attained by giving prominence to the following subjects: First, the practical study of natural science, including sketching from nature. Second, the practical study of hygiene, which would include the structure and management of houses and households. Third, the direct training of the bodily powers in precision, agility, and strength.

1. The importance of the practical study of natural science in the education of youth can hardly be too strongly urged. The love of nature when strengthened by a knowledge of nature gives occupation, amusement, mental and physical development of the best kind; it is an antidote to the morbid influences of fashion and dissipation; it hinders the premature development of function; it furnishes a basis of intellectual companionship between the sexes, and would prove invaluable to a mother in the education of her children. The power of habits formed in children by their parents are second only to the original type of constitution, and often overpower even the original tendencies; these habits are nevertheless formed by the silent working of influences, hour by hour and day by day, that are invisible and cannot be measured, that seem valueless, taking item by item in the long account, and yet in the aggregate they mould body and soul. A mother may instil the love of reading or the love of dress, she may form the habit of outdoor exercise or the habit of gossip, not by set precept or even formal regulations, but by her own tastes unavoidably moulding the tastes of her children, and flowing out naturally into those external arrangements that reflect the ruling spirit or affections of the individual. Did the mother possess a hearty interest in the wonders of field and forest, of sea and sky, what a treasury of delightful intercourse might be found in every country ramble! A mother’s love, joined to broad tastes and knowledge, would never weary of the ceaseless questioning of childhood; the older the child, the closer and more influential would be the companionship. The holiday by the sea-side or amongst the mountains, so often wasted in idleness or frivolity, might be a rich harvest-time of delightful knowledge drawn from the treasures of land and water.

It is the outdoor study of science and art that must be insisted on with the young--the cultivation of the powers of observation rather than memory--which powers compel the exercise of the muscles and senses. The guiding principle of health education is to follow the order of nature, and place the strengthening of the physical powers not independently of, but in advance of, the mental powers. If the order is reversed, and the immature mind be allowed to tyrannize over the immature body, and disturb the proportion of Nature’s work by withdrawing too much creative force to the exclusive stimulus of the mind, the true relations of mind and body can never be restored, the adult will never receive that ready and capable service that the body should render to the mind. In thus urging the paramount importance of some branches of study, particularly in a girl’s education, it is not intended to exclude all others. Many accomplishments, as well as various branches of knowledge, may be taught in such a way as to conduce to physical and mental health, and all studies may be so arranged and subordinated as to be innocuous. The principle here insisted on is that those studies must predominate and lead in the education of youth which most fully require the exercise of the physical as well as mental nature in their pursuit.

2. The direct study of hygiene involves so large a range of profoundly interesting subjects that it is difficult to display its full importance in a condensed sketch. The creation of a healthy happy home (which all will allow is the legitimate work of a woman) requires comprehensive knowledge. The structure and arrangements of a house adapted to the climate, soil, and wants of a family, including drainage, ventilation, warming, economy of labour; the management of a household in relation to individual wants and to society, including the subjects of food and waste, domestic service, petty trading, the care of the sick and prevention of disease, occupations and amusements--these and many other topics belong directly to the formation of a noble Christian home. These are subjects that men and women have a direct personal interest in. They may be taught in graduation with abundant illustration. The examination of economic museums, exercise in the inspection of houses and neighbourhoods, etc., should be added for advanced students. Every method should be used to impress facts on the memory and excite personal interest. To this end a system of rewards would be useful, whether of prizes or honours. There seems to be no reason why honorary degrees, scholarships, and fellowships should not be bestowed for proficiency in knowledge that relates to the health of mankind, as well as for distinction in classical and mathematical study.

3. The third subject of education in Health is the direct cultivation of the various bodily powers in strength, agility, and grace. This culture presupposes close attention to the weak points in the health of each individual student--those tendencies to disease which exist at present in every person. All will have remarked that the same morbid cause, applied to half a dozen people, will produce varying effects, according to individual peculiarities; thus, a current of cold air applied when the body is over-heated may cause either catarrh, bronchitis, neuralgia, rheumatism, intestinal derangement, according to the individual susceptibility. Youthful vitality masks, but does not cure, weak tendencies, unless those tendencies are known, and the exuberant vitality be especially directed to their cure. This season of life is, however, particularly favourable to such cure. Nature will never again present so valuable an opportunity of remodelling the constitution. A doctor of health or preventive medicine, who shall become acquainted with the constitution of each student and determine how far exercise must be modified to meet individual peculiarities, is an indispensable member of the faculty of any college that undertakes to educate in Health. With this observation and caution modern gymnastics and exercise in various forms will become an invaluable part of education. The muscles of the body are capable of the same careful training as the senses. As the eye and hand in painting, or the ear and hand in music, require long and careful practice to acquire skill, so the great variety of delicate or powerful muscles in the human body require careful exercise to draw forth the varied powers that belong to them. The ordinary movements of life do not call forth half these powers. As the large majority of people go through life with only an imperfect use of their lungs, from the constraint of clothing and sedentary habits, which weaken the thoracic muscles, so it is with other organs, and imperfect muscular action and weakened health is the result.

The principles of education which are thus laid down are the following, viz.: a constant observance of the order of human growth, the selection of studies that will carry out this order, habits and arrangements of college life that will enforce it, direct instruction in the necessary conditions of health, and careful training of the body. It is giving to education the grandest of all objects--use, which, if properly understood, includes the highest and most permanent culture of which the individual is capable. Were our beautiful sea-coasts studded with such colleges, with their wonderful playgrounds washed twice a day by the Atlantic waves, furnishing endless treasures for the eager gatherers, enthusiasm for health-giving studies would grow up in the youthful mind, and a stronger generation mould a nobler society.

The establishment of sanitary improvements by Government, and the remodelling of education, are not the only means by which we must seek to obey those Divine laws which are implanted in our nature. Every class of society, every institution--in short, our whole social life--needs to be re-born into the idea of health. The customs to which we all conform, whether rich or poor, the standards by which we measure success in life, and the means by which we seek to reach it, are all opposed to the idea of health. The hours we keep, our dress, our food, the excitements and strain of life, are injurious alike to mind and body. The deeper we look into the structure and state of society, the more serious are the effects of the general neglect of the laws of human growth. Practical life now is a cruel foe to pure enthusiastic youth; purity and enthusiasm are alike destroyed by the corrupt and faithless society into which they enter. We preach one standard of right; we practise another. We exact a superhuman effort from our children when, surrounded by temptations, we tell them not to fall into evil habits; we require an impossible thing when we expect them, as social beings, to do what is right when society does what is wrong. The diffusion, therefore, of sanitary knowledge through all classes of adult society is as necessary as the remodelling of education. It is through the gradual diffusion of this knowledge that combinations of individuals may be formed who will be strong enough to put down some of the senseless and injurious customs that now pervade society.

This principle of combination may wield a great and increasing power for good. Departure from any established custom by a single individual is an eccentricity, but the union of fifty for the same purpose will exercise a decided influence, and a hundred resolute men and women form a social power in the State. It is encouraging to recognise the power that might be exerted by such a band resolved to carry out the ‘Laws of Health’ in their daily lives!

There is only one form of combination, however, that I shall venture to suggest, and whose utility I think will be at once apparent.

I refer to the formation of a National Health Society. Such a society seems to be much needed--needed to give combination, direction, and impulse to the efforts of individuals; to form a storehouse of information to which all could apply; to assist health legislation by looking at this great subject from a family point of view, and educating the community into an intelligent appreciation of wise legislative measures; to attack such a great and growing evil as that of unconsumed smoke; to suggest improvements in education, and draw every charitable institution into health missionary work. Every other subject of human interest is represented by some society, more or less active, which takes up the social side of each particular work and urges its claims. It seems characteristic of the general neglect with which Health is treated that no national society of men and women has yet been formed to promote this vital subject--Health.

Such a society should extend its branches into every town and village of the land, and form a body of corresponding members, not only throughout the kingdom, but abroad. It might, with great advantage, promote the wide application of that excellent system of instruction initiated by Mr. Twining, of Twickenham. This gentleman has devoted his life to the diffusion of sanitary knowledge. Having established a museum of domestic arts in his grounds, open to the public, he has written a series of lectures, which are read by the curator of his museum and illustrated by his librarian, the illustrations for each lecture being ingeniously packed in a small box; he generously sends this little establishment to any place which will make arrangements for the delivery of the lectures. Such a system, varying the lectures and illustrations, might be applied to every little village in England, for two young ladies or gentlemen might certainly be found in every place to read discourses so prepared. If a Health Society did no other work than keep in constant activity such a simple plan of instruction as this, it would do a work of immense utility. There is, however, no limit to the practical suggestions that might thus be brought before the public to the influence that might be exercised upon family life, or to the sanitary institutions that might be formed by an energetic Health Society.

I have thus endeavoured to show:

1. That there are laws governing human growth according to an unvarying plan.

2. That neglect to study and obey these laws produces individual suffering in all classes of society and national degeneration.

3. That obedience must be rendered through legislation, education, and social life.

It is only when we have learned to recognise that God’s law for the human body is as sacred as--nay, is one with--God’s law for the human soul, that we shall begin to understand the Religion of Health.

FOOTNOTES:

The same year (1871) at a drawing-room meeting held in Dr. Blackwell’s house the National Health Society was formed, which has its offices at 53, Berners Street, London, W.--EDITOR.

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.

Transcriber’s Notes

Page 57: “theories of bateriology” changed to “theories of bacteriology”

Page 127: “an acknowleged authority” changed to “an acknowledged authority”

Page 178: “herioc efforts” changed to “heroic efforts”

Page 208: “thay will save” changed to “they will save”