SECTION CCLVII.. Sanitary Police.

SANITARY POLICE.

D. Hygienic measures and the improvement of the sanitary police of a country are of the utmost importance, not only to increase the number of inhabitants, but also to produce the conditions of population described in § 246.[257-1]

E. It is the indispensable condition precedent of all the measures which we have examined, if they would attain their end, that the means of subsistence of the people should be increased or at least more equally divided among them. Where this has been done the increase of population will, as a rule, take care of itself; where it has not, the artificially increased procreation of children can only produce new victims for the angel of death. A merely more equable distribution can, however, improve the condition of the people only in exceedingly rare cases. (§ 204). As a rule, the diseases which it is attempted to thus cure grow worse, or they at least increase in extent. (§ 80, ff., 250.) It is quite different, of course, when the more equable distribution coincides with an absolute growth of the nation's economy. We shall see, later, that, for instance, the freedom of land alienation and of industrial pursuits, when not accompanied by an important advance in the corresponding branches of economy may do more harm than good; but that under favorable circumstances a multitude of dormant forces are thereby awakened, and that then the national-economical dividend may be increased much more than the divisor. (§ 239. Roscher, Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, § 99, 139 ff.)