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4
many ways, we shall probably do well in considering
this question from the especial point of view of those
whose duty it is to protect and conserve the public
health.
Every party, faction, and sect in turn and all
together, talk about, write about, figure about, and in
the end leave the question in all its prime essentials
just about where they found it.
A palliative here, a platitude there, plus a fresh
set of statistics elsewhere, does not provide even the
beginning of a remedy for the evils of town life in
congested areas, where the people are absolutely
dwarfed and stunted for the want of space and lack
of means necessary to secure it.
The social and economic condition of the people
form, as it were, the raw material on which a public
health authority and its department has to conduct
operations. Given a raw material approximating to
good or fairly good, i.e., of good stock, well mothered
and nursed, properly clothed, well fed, and housed
say as well as beasts shown for prizes at agricultural
exhibitions, and you may reasonably expect favourable
results.
If on the contrary your raw material is to
continue to be a congested people, chronically below
par, under fed and badly clothed, in addition to being
mothered in factories and workplaces, and fathered by
males suffering from the demoralising effects of want
of employment, then it is useless to expect anything
like real or healthy progress, and the question I desire