246 THE CAUSATION OF DISEASE. 



ask, What can the London hospitals do for the sickly children 

 brought to them ? If they are ill of acute disease, their lives 

 may indeed often be saved, and when suffering from other 

 affections they may be patched up ; but at best it is a mere 

 "patch-up." Only a few cases can be taken into hospital ; the 

 great majority have to be treated as out-patients. Children 

 are brought dying for want of proper air and food, and the 

 physician is often sick at heart as he feels the futility of 

 for ever prescribing cod-liver oil and iron while the struggle 

 is one against the very conditions of existence, when what is 

 wanted is not physic, but good wholesome food, and sunshine, 

 and the sweet breath of heaven — the eternal requirements of 

 Nature — to substitute drugs for which is a wretched mockery. 

 These can but patch up the ailing little bodies — a poor 

 triumph for a noble art, and yet all that the inevitable 

 deterioration consequent on the conditions under which they 

 grow up leaves possible. 



The typical full-grown cockney is in truth a painfully dete- 

 riorated type of humanity. Who that has observed a London 

 mob can have failed to be struck by this ? I once saw such a 

 mob, some four or five hundred strong, marching, with banner 

 and trumpet, to a " demonstration." They were indeed a 

 blighted band — pale, wizen, stunted ; and as they marched 

 along, thinking no doubt that their many troubles arose from 

 unfair legislation, and vaguely dreaming, it may be, that a 

 happier lot would fall to their descendants, I could not but be 

 struck with the irony of Fate, for it was painfully evident that 

 not one of the sad faced crowd would live in a remote posterity. 

 The seal of doom was plainly marked upon them all : a few 

 sickly children perhaps they might rear, but it was clear that 

 sooner or later each family line must ingloriously end. 



Healthy, honest country folk come up to the great city to seek 

 their fortune, little knowing how they will be swallowed up by 

 the devouring monster, that their children will not be like 

 them or their fathers before them, but will help to fill the 

 ranks of a diminutive and degenerate race — of a race which is 

 perpetually rushing towards extinction. And yet, if you ask 

 these people whether they like London or the country best, the 

 answer is almost always in favour of the former. 



