WHAT WE LOSE AND WHAT WE GAIN. 22$ 



tolerate the withdrawal of food under sustained 

 physical effort for any prolonged period as com- 

 pared with the dwellers in rural districts. It 

 may be affirmed also that, through the various 

 factors at work night and day upon the consti- 

 tution 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 unerring fashion. Thus it may be 

 conceded as an established fact that the towns- 

 man is, on the whole, constitutionally dwarfed 

 in tone, and his life, man for man, shorter, 

 weaker, and more uncertain than the country- 

 man's. I hold the opinion that the deteriora- 

 tion 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 integ- 

 rity of cell-structure, and consequent liability 

 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 enfeeblement. 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-ceasing action, 

 paramount and decisive, on the physical frames 



