18 USEFULNESS OF PHYSIOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE. 



facts in physiology, or incapability of appreciating 

 their importance, men, of much good sense in every 

 other respect, not only subject themselves unwit- 

 tingly to the active causes of disease, but give their 

 sanction to laws and practices destructive equally 

 to life and to morality, which, if they saw them in 

 their true light, they would shrink from counte- 

 nancing in the slightest degree. 



For proof of this 1 need only refer to the evidence 

 on the Factories Regulation Bill, which lately occu- 

 pied so much of public attention.* The law then 

 in operation authorized the working of children be- 

 tween the years of eight and sixteen, in the close, 

 heated atmosphere of a cotton-mill, for twelve hours 

 a day; and, as a great boon, the period has been, 

 with much difficulty, reduced from twelve to eight 

 hours for the younger children. Had our legislators 

 been instructed in anatomy and physiology so far 

 as to obtain even the most general notion of the con- 

 stitution of the human body, and had they followed 

 without bias the conclusions to which such knowledge 

 would have led every reflecting mind, they would 

 never have sanctioned such a law as that which for- 

 merly disgraced the statute-book, nor would they 

 have shown any reluctance to modify its provisions 

 when its unfitness was pointed out to them. Had 

 such knowledge been familiar to their minds, and 

 morality been their aim, I doubt whether, instead 

 of objecting to the reduction when it was proposed, 

 any one would have been found hardy enough to 

 affirm that even the present amount of labour is not 

 too much for ungrown children, [t may be that the 

 evidence in the printed report was partially got up ; 

 but it contains a multitude of facts so entirely in 

 accordance with the soundest and best understood 

 principles in physiology, which no counter-evidence 

 can rebut, that one can only lament the ignorance 



* [In Great Britain.] 



