236 What We Lose 



period as compared with the dwellers in rural dis- 

 tricts. It may be affirmed also that, through the 

 various factors at work night and day upon the con- 

 stitution of the poorer class of town-dwellers, 

 various forms of disease are developed, of which 

 pulmonary consumption is the most familiar, and 

 which is doing its fatal work in a lavish and uner- 

 ring fashion. Thus it may be conceded as an 

 established fact that the townsman is, on the whole, 

 constitutionally dwarfed in tone, and his life, man 

 for man, shorter, weaker, and more uncertain than 

 the countryman's. I hold the opinion that the 

 deterioration is more in physique, as implied in 

 the loss of physical or muscular power of the 

 body, the attenuation of muscular fibre, the loss 

 of integrity of cell-structure, and consequent liabil- 

 ity to the invasion of disease, rather than in actual 

 stature of inch-measurement. The true causes of 

 this deterioration are neither very obscure nor far 

 to seek. They are bad air and bad habits. 



Taking these causes in the order in which I have 

 placed them, but without reference to their relative 

 intensity, I think bad air is a potent factor of en- 

 feeblement. Included in the phrase "bad air" 

 are bad sanitation and overcrowding. I have no 

 doubt in my mind that it has a powerful and never- 



