﻿ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO HUMAN LIFE AND HEALTH. 91 



born and bred in the crowded parts of towns are sickly, pale, feeble, 

 unnaturally sharp and wizened, their voices are of bad quality, and 

 their height and weight deficient. The elder people become reckless, 

 often depraved, dirty, and scarcely ever free from ailments. Their 

 whole bodily, mental, and moral nature deteriorates. As a consequence, 

 it is difficult for native townsfolk to obtain emx)loyment in competition 

 with immigrants from the country. In general, policemen, laborers, 

 domestic servants, and several other classes of employees are found to 

 be most fitted for their duties if country born, and thus perpetual immi- 

 gration is stimulated. The best and strongest people are constantly 

 migrating to the great towns, bringing their health and youth to sup- 

 ply the demand for good work, and reducing the death rate, so that the 

 true proportion of victims of town air and town conditions fails to be 

 realized. As a matter of fact, it has been ascertained that very few 

 families survive in central London for more than four generations, and 

 that many die out in two or three generations. A true Londoner of 

 the fifth and even of the fourth generation is rare. A very large pro- 

 portion, probably the majority, lose the fine stock of health they brought 

 with them from the country within two generations.^ This is a matter 

 of national and international importance, and the fact should be clearly 

 understood by the public and by legislators that the desertion of the 

 country by the best blood involves the rapid consumption of the finest 

 physical, mental, and moral qualities. 



We have, in fact, in our midst areas — climates, if we may so strain the 

 term — of which the properties come into close competition with the influ- 

 ences of the tropics in bringing about the decline and extirpation of 

 families. If the inner circle of a great city were to exclude immigra- 

 tion for a generation, the poverty of its health resources would stare it 

 in the face, and the falling value of a day's labor would startle it into 

 the promotion of hygienic reform. Eoom and space would be demanded 

 as a necessity for the proper development of human beings. 



The rate of mortality is greatly increased by the bad air of towns, 

 and especially by the close, foul air of dwellings and workshops. But 

 the rate of sickness is still more increased above that of the breezy 

 country. In one part of the parish of St. George's-in-the-East, in Lon- 

 don, there are nine cases of sickness to one death, but in the worst 

 part of the same district there are twenty known cases of sickness to 

 one death, and a sickness rate of 620 per 1,000. There is, in fact, no 

 good health in the people of the crowded streets, unless it may be for 



1 Defining a Londoner as one who habitually resides in London, with only few 

 holidays, and whose great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents were Londoners, 

 it is exceedingly difficult to find such a specimen among 5,000,000 people. Even 

 true Londoners of the third generation are very disproportionately small in numbers 

 and feeble in health and strength. These facts, however, do not prove that the 

 inhabitants of large towns must of necessity decay unless recruited from without, 

 for with better homes, houses, more air, reduced hours of work, more holidays, and 

 better hygienic conditions of suburban as compared with central quarters, the pros- 

 pect of continued vitality greatly improves. 



