MODERN IDEAS OF SANITAIIT ECONOMY. 



65 



Statisticians have done so much to illustrate the painful con- 

 dition of a great deal of the population of Europe, that vague 

 notions of equal happiness and equal health among all classes 

 have given way to the simplest facts, and I suppose we cannot 

 pay any attention to the opinion of that man who will say 

 that ignorance, poverty, and dirt, may enjoy life as much as he 

 who has taken the greatest advantage of all the gifts of wisdom. 



We have learnt the state of man in many things, but we 

 must avoid supposing that we have arrived at the laws which 

 regulate man's life. Speaking with reference to laws such as 

 those mentioned in Quetelet's " Treatise on Man" we may 

 say that he and such statisticians shew the laws which govern 

 Frenchmen, Englishmen, or Belgians, in certain conditions ; 

 and that if the countries remain in the same state of educa- 

 tion, — if they keep the same mode of government, and the 

 same manufactures, — if they do not change their habits, and if 

 no great religious or other movement seize hold on them, — 

 then their bodily and mental health is in all respects likely to 

 remain the same. But these men are all capable of immense 

 change, as history proves. With us the sanitary movement 

 has for a time been very active, and the knowledge of many 

 necessary conditions of public as well as private health has 

 been disseminated among ail the reading public, so as to be 

 now proverbially true; but their adoption by the unreading 

 and unthinking has to follow, and that probably will not be 

 done until public bodies shall have shewn a public example. 

 This example is being shown, to more or less advantage, in 

 some hundred places in this country, and the course of proce- 

 dure in making a town to some extent less unhealthy, has been 

 very nearly reduced to a system. 



We have seen that all who think on the subject, condemn 

 moist land, and although I think we may fairly dispute the 

 reasons given, it may now be taken for granted that the 

 somewhat sarcastic remark of one of the best of satirists had 

 some foundation, that " the great object of a wise man is to 



K 



