TOWN-LIFE AS A CAUSE OF DEGENERACY. 329 



As regards tlie physical improvement or degeneracy of the 

 population, the report of the Anthropometric Committee at the 

 Southport meeting says : " Few statistics are in existence which 

 help to throw light on this subject. It is generally believed that 

 the population in the manufacturing towns of the north of Eng- 

 land is rapidly degenerating, but a comparison of the measure- 

 ments of stature and weight given in the report of the Factory 

 Commission, and the report to the Local Government Board of 

 the employment of children and young persons in factories, 1873, 

 show that this is not the case." 



What we want is more extensive inquiries as to measurements 

 of persons who have lived in large towns for two or three gener- 

 ations, and compare them with those who have lived in the sur- 

 rounding country for some generations without admixture. Such 

 an inquiry is surrounded by difficulties, but it alone would be con- 

 clusive. My contention is, that it is in the loss of physique, of 

 muscular tonicity, vital capacity, and vital force that the degen- 

 eracy is to be found. Let the town-dweller of the same height 

 and weight go to the Grasmere sports or the Braemar gathering 

 and try conclusions in wrestling or games of prowess and endur- 

 ance with the hill-side man, and the issue will not long hang in 

 doubt ; the town man has no " staying power," no " muscular con- 

 tractile power," and he soon comes to grief. Probably no arrest 

 in the downward tendency of constitutional power can take place 

 until there is some amelioration in the conditions of life to which 

 town-dwellers are subjected. Development and integrity of cell- 

 structure, and the processes of vital organization, are next to im- 

 possible under such circumstances of life as those to which they are 

 exposed. This question is a broad one, and involves many rami- 

 fications. If all the circumstances connected with the so-called 

 " sweating system " brought out by " The Lancet " Commission 

 can be sustained as facts, a terribly hideous and degrading state 

 of things exists among those unfortunate creatures compelled by 

 the irony of Fate to dwell and work in the slums of our great 

 towns. Their life is little removed from the process of wallowing 

 in dirt, and abiding in squalor and poverty of the most appalling 

 description. They are surrounded by every circumstance of hu- 

 man existence calculated to debase the mind and destroy the body. 

 Is it possible to conceive any state of life more conducive to loss 

 of health and dwarfing of physical development ? These poor 

 creatures appear to have no qualifying or redeeming feature in 

 their every-day routine of life. Breathing in their insanitary 

 homes the reeking fumes of unhealthy surroundings, an atmos- 

 phere vitiated to the last degree of respiratory fitness, to which 

 are added unwholesome food and consequent faulty assimilation 

 the aggregation must inevitably result in depraved constitutional 



VOL. XXXIV. — 22 



