Since that date the reports of health committees all over the country record the substantial results of persevering work in the interests of hygiene, qualified by the fact that the experience of other nations has been abundantly confirmed by our own, namely, that it is futile to legislate in advance of public opinion. Until the populace has been impregnated with a knowledge of what is right, right action, though demanded by its legislators, will be perverted by ignorant intention or by resentful indolence. Even those who have served the cause of sanitation most loyally recognise that coercion is but a poor yeast with which to leaven measures for the public weal; the product is liable to become sour and worthless rather than wholesome and effective. One higher grade must be pa.s.sed by the nation under the tutelage of a sanitary reform before its education can be called complete.
The final stage in this last long period is described by Professor de Chaumont as that of "Freedom," of which the attainment is not possible until action is based on intelligent individual conviction. Then and then alone there will be a general recognition that "rights" are inevitably a.s.sociated with responsibilities, and that true liberty is followed not by license, but by self-control and respect for the rights of others.
IV. WHY THE IDEALS OF MODERN HYGIENE ARE NOT ATTAINED
And so it has come about that, with this ideal in view, the methods of modern hygiene are directed to awaken the nation"s sanitary conscience and to stimulate the growth of true civic freedom. These methods may be fairly defined as the working of common sense aided by the results of scientific research, in their turn supported by very carefully tested applications. Necessarily it is a.s.sumed that each individual will accord to them intelligent, personal support and, where necessary, will be willing to sink unreasonable likes and dislikes in the sea of social service.
Examples of the enormous benefit inseparable from well-considered sanitary legislation could be multiplied; though, on the other hand, it is also necessary to check optimism by many ill.u.s.trations of the grievous harm still being wrought by want of thought. Hindrance to possible progress is also a.s.sociated with the ignorance of those whose development has not yet attained the level when freedom of action can be permitted. It is some of the results of this ignorant indolence which cause the minds of the thoughtful and far-sighted to be tense with anxiety for the welfare of their country, and arouse a wish for further and more stringent public health enactments. Nevertheless, again it must be said that to legislate in advance of public opinion is futile. Only after stupendous exertion, for instance, has the serious and continued mortality among infants excited general attention; and the curious, widespread indifference to the recommendations of recent Royal Commissions on the Poor Law and the Care of the Feeble-minded indicates that, were infant mortality controllable by legislation, such legislation would still fail of its object unless it were also realised that a child"s hold on life is practically dependent upon parental care, and is intimately a.s.sociated with maternal nutrition before its birth.
Or again; the law relating to the protection of the public food supply is approaching a high pitch of excellence; the penalties on adulteration or on the sale of diseased or otherwise unwholesome foodstuffs are severe and quite frequently inflicted; _but_ these regulations are powerless to influence the errors of nutrition constantly reflected in the features of our population at each age period, neither can they stem the tide of self-indulgence, emotionalism and luxury which enervate and deteriorate thousands of our people. Vain indeed are their endeavours to disguise by alcoholism and drugs the traces of their misfortunes. Stern Nature is relentless; her laws are as those of the Medes and Persians; the children"s teeth _shall_ be set on edge by the fruits of the reckless folly and intemperance of their ancestors.
Is sanitary legislation therefore a failure, or by what means can light from the sun of knowledge penetrate this dense ma.s.s of ignorance and apathy? For what reason has it opposed such a resistant surface to the manipulations of the reformer or to the coercions of the official? These questions do not, unfortunately, admit of concise or conclusive replies.
Each political party in turn points the finger of reproach and derision at its opponents for the modest success by which their legislative efforts at social reforms are attended. Disease, malnutrition, alcoholism and overwork continue to hamper their efforts, and will continue so to do, until a sanitary conscience is awakened in each breast, at an age when habits and ideals are still unformed.
There is no royal road to the solution of these serious problems. They call for infinite, patient and untiring tact, while they also demand the employment of many and varied well-considered methods, based on a sound foundation of sanitary and social science. The day for reform by theory is over; the moment for practice by individual example and co-operative effort has arrived.
V. SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF MAN"S PHYSICAL NATURE
Before proceeding to suggest some means by which to increase the stability of the national health through the agency of family life, it will be advantageous to recall the advice given to students of any form of life by Professor Arthur Thomson:--that they should, before attempting to form conclusions as to its nature, submit its const.i.tution to a.n.a.lysis, with the a.s.sistance of what he described as the biological prism. This, he says, will throw light on the inherited nature of the creature--the capital, so to say, with which it is endowed at birth. It will illuminate the functional nature of its parts, and will reveal what it does in the course of its ceaseless activities--nervous, muscular and organic. Further, the prismatic rays will render visible the results of some of the influences dependent upon the environment with which it is surrounded, which play upon it before and after birth. Unfortunately these rays, when directed to human nature, cannot penetrate so deeply nor divulge so clearly the secrets of this the highest and most complex form of life, as they do when directed to its simpler manifestations.
All ordinary difficulties are enhanced by our human capacity for racial admixture and the creation of an artificial environment.
This much, however, is clearly revealed by a partial a.n.a.lysis. Human beings, in common with all life, are distinguished by the power of movement, and are sensitive to many forms of external stimulus:--heat, cold, electricity, or pressure. They pa.s.s their lives in rhythmic alternations of activity and repose; they breathe; they absorb food to supply energy and to maintain unimpaired the substance of their bodies; they excrete waste products. They share with plants and animals an intrinsic tendency to continue their growth for a certain period and up to a definite amount, while, at the close of the most p.r.o.nounced period of growth, ability to transmit life absorbs the energy hitherto utilised for personal development, by which means the perpetuation of a species is secured. Research shows, also without possibility of question, that certain similar characteristics distinguish the mechanism of every type of animal life; though the machinery be in some cases of the simplest, in others highly complex. Thus have been revealed many secrets of man"s physical nature; as, for instance, the knowledge that, in the earliest stages of their existence, higher forms of life recapitulate more or less imperfectly certain far-off ancestral phases of development, of which living specimens are still to be found on the lower branches of humanity"s huge genealogical tree. By means also of the close and detailed observation of these lowlier organisms a clearer conception has been formed of the intricacies of growth and the prolonged process of development in mankind. Just how human beings have come to be what they are, mentally and morally as well as physically, is a still unsolved problem. There are, of course, many missing chapters in the long story of life, though so far no contradictions have been detected in its arguments. The sad side of this biological lore exists in the now ascertained fact that the highest intellectual and moral powers, those last to develop, are the first to suffer arrest or to die away when the organism is subjected to premature exhaustion or to precocious responsibility. Predisposing causes are found in disease, dissipation, or defective nurture.
Another of the more important lessons to be learnt from the pages of this book of life"s history is the conservative influence of the law of inherited nature; a law which makes for the preservation of racial types by suppressing wide deviations from the normal. A familiar ill.u.s.tration of this may be found in the fact that the children of parents of great height or of very short stature usually revert to the average of the race. The significance of this genetic relation in maintaining an efficient people was unrecognised until quite recent times, and though valuable evidence is acc.u.mulating on the descent of hereditary character in mankind, no definite conclusions have yet been reached on the _intensity_ of the transmission of qualities. It is, of course, a subject of intense complexity, the full discussion of which is here impossible. In the interests of future generations it is, however, to be wished that more thought were given to the conclusions it is allowable to draw. "If," for instance, says a recent writer, "instead of allowing the race to mate at random we selected both parents for some one quality, we could raise the intensity of inheritance and establish gradually, by continued selection, a strain in which the quality reached a value much higher than the average in the original mixed race...."[99]
Thus could a race be strengthened for life"s calls, or, on the contrary, until and unless the people are awakened to the existence and bearing on their national security of such fundamental hygienic influences, it can be emasculated. No such selection is likely ever to dominate human marriages, but an appreciation of these and similar facts is fundamental to national progress; and in time the dissemination of such knowledge will be considered a parental duty, the more urgent since the resources of civilisation and ill-regulated sympathy have combined to brush aside the sterner laws of nature, so that the deteriorated threaten to become the chief progenitors of the next generation.
During the process of studying the abundant evidence of life"s progress from the simple to the complex, it becomes also apparent that it is affected by forces other than heredity. Recognition of the ever-present influence of these potent but often disregarded forces makes for harmonious living, whereas their neglect is a.s.sociated with heavy penalties. I refer to the capacity for individual variation from the racial type; to the modification of each individual by his or her surroundings; and to the personal predisposition, technically described as diathesis, which influences the reaction made to every form of stimulus. Of these three forces, the first is the result of an inborn tendency to deviate from the ancestral type; an orderly process with a definite intention, by no means a mere chance fluctuation. This certainly makes for progress as well as for interest in life, though it enhances the difficulties of education, because it demands the adaptation of conditions to each individual"s requirements. The second, the law of modification, takes into account the influence of environment upon inherited nature; the effects of climate, and food, for example, or of forms of occupation. Predisposition is, of course, a personal quality--a factor of primary importance in our susceptibility to or power to resist disease or in our capacity to withstand adverse conditions. This property is responsible for the greater or less degree of adaptability to new conditions possessed by each of us, and is concerned with our power to live in tune or at discord with our surroundings.
Another biological law, that of periodicity,[100] or of rhythmic alternations of activity and rest, has. .h.i.therto often suffered among human beings more in the breach than in the observance of its tenets; though unquestionably conformity to its requirements makes for health and stability. Throughout nature habits of rhythmic, organic activity are too familiar to attract attention. Of these, the periodic return of the seasons, for instance, or the daily tides, the flowering of plants and the ripening of fruit, the migrations of birds and the hibernation of certain insects and animals, are obvious examples. These rhythms have been proved by experience to be advantageous in the world. They make for efficiency and economise energy, and, from their high degree of development in man"s nature, it may be fairly a.s.sumed that to him their observance is of great consequence. Many of them are beyond his control; such, for example, as the diurnal variations of his body temperature, the beating of the heart, the call of hunger, or the rhythm of growth.
Others he can observe or abuse according to his pleasure; sleep, for instance, or the rhythm of work, or the daily discharge from his body of its waste products.[101] It is the work of hygiene to demonstrate how to combine obedience to all these laws with the demands of modern existence, and it is the duty of man to conform reasonably to modes of life based on these demonstrations. More especially does responsibility for the establishment of certain rhythms, such as sleep, devolve upon the organiser of a child"s early life.
VI. THE ORIGIN OF FAMILY LIFE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO SANITARY SCIENCE
Further researches into the records of the past, and a closer study of the underlying principles upon which humanity has formulated many generally adopted customs, indicate how unexpectedly intimate is the relation between the growth of a social organisation and the origin of primitive efforts after the preservation of life and health. The world at large is so accustomed to the widespread existence of family life that curiosity is rarely aroused as to its origin, intention and worth; consequently to ignorance of its significance must be attributed the a.s.sertion that the custom is well-nigh obsolete and the proposal of some would-be reformers to abolish the inst.i.tution and to instal the State _in loco parentis_.
Professor McDougall[102] a.s.sures us that such is the social importance of the family that all who have given serious attention to the question are agreed that the stability of the family is the prime condition of a healthy state. This opinion is supported by other writers,[103] who have emphasised their conviction that the healthful development of the individual--even the possibilities of racial progress--depend to a large degree upon maintaining intact the integrity of family life. Their conclusions are based upon recent researches into the sciences of biology, sociology, and economics.
The origin of this relation is apparently traceable to one of the many forms of human a.s.sociation which have proved advantageous in the struggle for existence, when the value to a man and his wife of so protecting their offspring during childhood that there should be later on an array of l.u.s.ty sons and industrious daughters thrust itself on their notice. The division of strenuous work, for instance, the pursuit and preparation of food, the effective defence of their rude shelters against the depredations of their foes, were substantial advantages to be derived in primitive times from the possession of a large group of children. Upon the youthful vigour and strength of their family the parents could rely also when overtaken by the weakness of old age or by accident or disease.
These economic and sociological advantages were so early appreciated and are so widely adopted that traces of family life are to be detected in the history and customs of every tribe or community hitherto investigated. The bond thus formed, even amongst the lowest savages, first developed, then strengthened the ties of natural affection between a mother and her children and prolonged its emotional existence. In the case of the paternal parent, it is probable that the motives which incited him to make the efforts necessary for the protection of his helpless infants might more probably be found in the desire to leave an avenger on individual enemies and a feeling that funeral rites would be duly performed after his death, as well as his tribe strengthened in war.
The gradual development of the human home has been admirably described by more than one writer, who has a.s.sociated its evolution with the gregarious instinct, recognised in many of the higher forms of animal life.[104] Within reason, a.s.sociated numbers represent power--power to preserve the progeny, therefore to maintain the numbers, which again in reason make for social support and independence. Power for defence, power to secure an adequate supply of food and ability to differentiate occupations, thus dividing labour, so that while the men of a family group were engaged in war or the chase, their womenkind devoted their attention to the creature comforts which promote health and efficiency--these are all factors which make for progress.
VII. WOMAN"S VOCATION IN HOME AND FAMILY LIFE
And so it came about that to some extent woman"s special and privileged vocation as a home-maker began even in prehistoric times. Upon her it devolved to rear the children she bore; to cook, to mend, to make, to spin and dye and weave; to prepare a welcome for the victor and to minister to the sick or wounded. No sense of menial limitation in their duties was apparent among the notable women of the past. They were skilled workers, capable and respected managers, under whose direction men as well as women carried out the details of daily work, to whose care in later centuries castle and garrison were entrusted in the absence of their lords, and who most evidently a.s.sumed this responsibility with confidence and success.
The changing conditions of the last three centuries, however, reacted in many ways to the detriment of women"s domestic energies and sapped their pride in the vocation of housewife. Industrial developments took much occupation out of their hands, and they were not apparently concerned to undertake others more in consonance with modern life. As concentration of the population in large centres undermined the last survival of feudal conditions, the strong conservative instinct of women made it hard for them to adapt themselves and their households to revised methods:--to subst.i.tute "new lamps for old," so that gradually it seems women became split up into two parties, somewhat out of sympathy one with the other. Adherence to the traditions of the past and the attractions of social life distinguished the one party; a restless desire to give scope to their whole nature and to work out their own salvation on unconventional lines possessed the other. In the one case there was no desire for domestic reformation. What methods could be better than their great-grandmother"s! In the other, glimpses of what seemed a far wider and more intellectual life than that of the ordinary housewife diminished interest in the physical needs of human nature, which it was thought made no claims on mental faculties, and of which the daily care was constantly a.s.sociated with irksome restrictions and a position of financial dependence.
It is not possible here even to outline the numerous social and commercial innovations which have modified every side of daily life for the last two hundred years; but, when inclined harshly to rebuke women for some of their now almost inexplicable blindness to these changes, it is well to remember that the flood of new discoveries, new inventions, new modes of transit, new forms of occupation and amus.e.m.e.nt, new means of money-making and fresh excitements imposed an enormous strain upon nervous systems, still but slowly adapting themselves to the stir and stress of the modern world. That eyes should be temporarily dazzled by the brilliance of the "wonderful century"; that the first results of freedom from a period of unnatural restraint should be intoxication with liberty, is not surprising. Full of encouragement is, however, the fact that an increasing number of women of all ranks are engaged to-day in efforts to direct the light of modern knowledge to the betterment of human life; the movement speaks for the innate soundness of their womanhood and for their realisation of their imperial responsibilities. Many of these efforts are still unsystematised, many good intentions are held to be of equal worth with organised practical knowledge; many women are alive only to the needs of the least favoured of the community and are dead to the urgent calls for intelligent reforms in their own domiciles. But if the willing mind be there, the direction of the work into desirable channels will slowly though surely follow. It is most certainly unnecessary to pour every girl into the mould of a conventional German hausfrau in order that she may perceive the inner meaning of family life. G.o.d fulfils Himself in many ways, and diversity of training and of interests is as beneficial as it is desirable. Neither can the women of a country single-handed conserve this great inst.i.tution of family life. The loyalty of boys and the co-operation of men are imperative to its preservation. They as well as their mothers, wives, and sisters must realise its responsibilities and opportunities, and must maintain the dignified position of those who preside over this unit of community life; they also must respond to the crying need for its adaptation to the requirements of modern civilisation.
VIII. THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY IN NATIONAL LIFE
Mrs. Bosanquet[105] has told us that the most important economic function of the family to-day is its direct control of the prosperity or ruin of nations; for here alone are found in combination the forces which determine the quant.i.ty of the population with the forces which determine its quality. To control these forces offers, to say the least, a life-work for countless men and women. Both parents must safeguard the character of their children"s inherited nature; both s.e.xes are more or less directly or remotely concerned in the provision of a suitable environment for human lives, infant or adult. Under the circ.u.mstances it may well be a matter for surprise that we have been so slow to perceive that the right performance of these duties demands a preliminary study of the art of preserving health and promoting progress, and we marvel at the placid spirit of content which has sanctioned the conversion into a stronghold of empiricism, the very place where a sound knowledge of progressive sanitary science is of primary importance.
In the book to which reference has been already made, Mrs. Bosanquet also enumerates the causes which in her opinion militate most actively against the continuance of family life at the present day. Among others she mentions evasion of responsibility, self-indulgence (with which we are very familiar), reliance upon external sources of maintenance, and the unequal distribution among the members of a family of the burden of support. Further, she refers to the unfortunate failure among parents to realise that the old Roman customs of parental possession and filial submission are out of date to-day, and calls upon the wise guardian to subst.i.tute others which lead to loyalty and love.
The new movement for a study of the characteristics of childhood and adolescence should materially contribute to the realisation that this parental att.i.tude of dominant authority must be now a.s.sociated with and modified by a more balanced understanding of the phases of youthful development and of the intricacies of individual temperament.
Convenience has. .h.i.therto encouraged the customary regulation of a group of young lives as if they were one and the same individual, no allowance being made for variation in character or in age, in propensities or in health. Each nursery party or infant school serves to ill.u.s.trate the point. Individual tendencies to cold or to fatigue, to nerve storms or to indolence; individual capacities in diet, occupation or exercise, must be intelligently respected if potentialities are to become actualities.
In the well-conducted home, for example, a study of individual character must in the future replace cast-iron discipline or easy-going, child-spoiling indulgence. The fact that the early cultivation of good habits makes for healthful happiness must be generally appreciated; and the duty of the home to provide opportunity for the exercise of personal tastes, the importance of training as a relief to nervous strain and as the best means to develop resource and skill, must be perceived. It will be by this constant understanding supervision in early years, and later by the cultivation of an intimate sympathetic comradeship with his children, that the modern parent will retain for his country the cementing force of family life.
IX. THE MEANING OF INFANCY
The great discovery of John Fiske as to the reasons for the long continuance of childhood in man must not be overlooked in this connection; it bears so directly on health and efficiency, and is closely a.s.sociated with the importance of the family to the individual as well as to the nation. Why, it may be asked, is man"s period of helplessness so prolonged; why, when his brain development reaches so high a standard, is he for years in a position of entire dependence, whereas snakelet and chick are practically self-supporting from the hour of hatching? When the lower forms of animal life are compared with mankind, the non-existence in their case of any such stage as infancy is at once apparent. They are brought into the world able to take care of themselves and to live an independent individual existence. Young pigs run almost as soon as they are born, young swallows fly directly they are fledged.
Now, if the structure of lower animals be examined, it will be found that they have no central warehouse corresponding to the human brain for the storage of new sensations or for an elaborate and original response to them. Each such animal repeats the life of its parents; each responds in exactly the same way to the contact of air, of earth, of food, or of water. Their activities, it is true, are distinguished by accuracy and despatch, but the offspring of a hen of the twentieth century has no larger capacity for the variation of these activities than has the chick which was hatched out six thousand years ago. The guinea-pig of to-day, for example, remains mentally at the level of his thousandth ancestor. Wherein then lies the difference between the pig and the baby?
As animals rise in the scale, as their brains become more subtle, more elaborate in structure, their actions become correspondingly more numerous and complicated, more varied, more individual. The nervous systems of such animals are characterised by an increasing complexity of development, and this provides the machinery necessary to the performance of an increasing number of muscular and mental co-ordinations; they can adapt themselves to unfamiliar surroundings and possess much enhanced advantages in the struggle for existence. _But_, a.s.sociated with these advantages, is a much longer period of immaturity, because, where the capacity for flexibility and progress is great, the antenatal period is insufficient for the establishment of the necessary nervous connections or even for the development of the brain cells between which these connections will be formed. The chick will have its full plumage in ten weeks, but mentally it is far below a dog or a monkey, whose period of immaturity is much longer. Similarly, the dog attains his maturity long before the monkey, who is infinitely his superior in fertility of resource, power to learn through imitation, and capacity for attention. The infant in its turn is far longer in a dependent condition than the highest ape.
Relatively large in bulk at birth, and reaching usually its full ma.s.s in the first fourteen years of life, the human brain possesses throughout childhood vast silent areas, big with future potentialities, areas in which the cells are slowly ripening to function. Even after full growth in size is reached, many more years must pa.s.s before capacity for the higher mental functions or for the complete control of such functions has developed. It must be borne in mind that, throughout this period of immaturity, errors of nutrition or defective stimulation may interfere with function. One of the most important duties of the home is to provide the suited environment for its child occupants during these long and anxious years. How long they are has been emphasised by Dr.
Clouston,[106] who has said that, of all the periods of brain growth, the most important, as regards the development of our highest moral and mental potentialities, is that between eighteen and twenty-five years of age, when the capacity for self-control should be coming into function in its highest relations, and when failure to ripen in due course is fraught with most serious consequences for the future.
There is no such thing, therefore, as infancy or parental care in the lowest orders of animal life; of which, one result is a gigantic mortality among their offspring. Enormous numbers of eggs are laid to ensure the preservation of the species when left to fend for themselves. The turbot, for instance, must deposit millions of minute gla.s.sy ova or the species would become extinct. Even among frogs the destruction of tadpoles is so great that provision must be made to allow for this loss. The fostering care of birds for their young at once permits a great reduction in the number of the offspring; but, though birds give evidence of some capacity for parental care, infancy, as such, is really confined to mammalian young. Even here it is curtailed in a vast number of species; but wherever it exists it stands for power to progress, and represents capacity for benefiting by, indeed depending upon, education, if only in the simple form of learning by imitation--a form familiar to readers of such books as Long"s "Schools of the Woods."
Plasticity is the hall-mark of progress; educability indicates a brain more or less competent to a.s.similate, to remember, to compare, to discriminate. This door of progress has been merely set ajar for even the higher apes; it is open to man only. The period of plasticity is evidently prolonged in proportion to the degree in which conscious intelligence has superseded mere brute force in promoting successful survival--that is to say, the transmission of _mental ability_ rather than of _physical strength_ postpones maturity. Man alone possesses in full the powers of selection and adaptation, of reason and of emotion, of memory and of mental originality, which are included in his rich heritage of life. If he is to realise his full potentialities, he must have protection for years after birth and an extended time for development. The immature infant must be fed, sheltered, and stimulated, if the inherent powers of adjustment to surroundings are to develop normally. But so great is the instability a.s.sociated with human immaturity and future potentiality, that arrested development is too often the heavy penalty paid by the child for the ignorance and carelessness of his parents.[107] Faults of food and clothing, insufficient warmth, cleanliness, or exercise, premature work or precocious responsibility and independence, prolonged overstrain or insufficient stimulation of mind and body, are the prevalent causes by which a child"s normal growth is warped and prejudiced. Where this occurs he never enters into his birthright of power; it has too often been thoughtlessly bartered by his natural guardians, literally for a mere mess of pottage.
X. CAUSES WHICH MENACE HEALTHFUL INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD
Perhaps one of the greatest inconsistencies of an inconsistent nation lies in the fact that the extraordinary ignorance of the elementary needs of a tender infant is not confined to one section of society; it is found in Belgravia as well as in Bermondsey. Thus, though the chief sources of the tuberculosis which is responsible for the presence of 45 per cent. of the children in the London Invalid Schools are confined to the homes of the poorer cla.s.ses,[109] inquiries into the incidence of rickets among children in Glasgow show a higher percentage of cases in the families of mechanics than of labourers[110]--a clear ill.u.s.tration that ignorance and not poverty is here the predisposing cause. Impure air and stuffy, ill-ventilated rooms are concerned in the susceptibility to both diseases, as is also malnutrition with its a.s.sociated diminution of the innate powers of self-protection. But, in the one case, inability to provide suitable food is the general cause; while in the other, inexcusable ignorance of the right forms in which food should be supplied to young children is a certain source of the evil.
The thought is pathetic, for the causes are wholly preventable. Pitiful also, because less excusable, is the grievous injury to health a.s.sociated with a mouth full of rotten teeth, permitted as it is among families possessed of sufficient means to meet the cost of cure, who prefer to spend their money upon dress and amus.e.m.e.nt, or among the members of which necessary endurance of a trifling shock has not been cultivated. Were the foulness of the discharge from a carious tooth to be externally visible, the aesthetic instinct among the refined would clamour for prompt treatment; but, unfortunately for health, the results of the disease are concealed, and consequently condoned.
Again: light, sunshine and quiet are now known to be essential to physical development and to the possession of a sound nervous system; the statement amounts to a plat.i.tude, for is not every wealthy invalid despatched to complete convalescence by the sea or in the country, and is not the custom of a general annual holiday due largely to the conscious benefits derived from an open-air life far from the bustle of towns? Yet physical morality is so poorly developed that the atmosphere of suburban as well as urban districts is permanently obscured by the preventable and wasteful results of imperfect combustion, though the detriment is incalculable to those whose lives see no change of air.
The ceaseless rumble of noisy traffic, allowed to disturb the rest of thousands, or more probably of millions, of our population, is another factor responsible for the prevalence of unstable nerves and of ill-balanced brains. It a.s.sumes great gravity when it is realised that among these sleepers are numbered the children whose hours of rest are already most seriously curtailed.
Another sin against childhood bears long enduring fruits. I refer to the terrible results upon the lives of those infants who survive efforts to prevent their birth. The fact ought to be, if it is not, common knowledge; yet the sale of the infamous drugs, necessary to the crime, by pennyworths, in every drug-store, is tacitly sanctioned by the community.
Professor Sadler"s[111] determination to direct attention to the requirements of our adolescents has aroused such response, that excuse is now impossible for ignoring the detrimental effects upon young people of unskilled, exhausting "blind alley" work, or of removing prematurely the restraint of moral discipline and systematised training.[112]
Statistics show not only the economic disasters which result from the unsatisfactory methods of past years; they bring home also the steady increase in the percentage of the proportion of nervous instability as well as of anaemia, which interfere with the form of brain growth so rapid in adolescence (namely, increase in complexity of a.s.sociation, and in power to inhibit, to reason, and to concentrate). Another result of these investigations is to draw attention to the increase in organic heart disease, which has been shown to occur in more than thirty per cent. of the London errand boys who are engaged in prolonged work on Sat.u.r.days, as well as in out-of-school hours during the week.[113]