20 Literary and Philosophical Society. 



Males die earlier than females. 



Great towns are in a peculiar degree fatal to children. 

 The confinement of children in impure air, * debarred from 

 the free use of their limbs, cuts them off early in life.' 

 The love of money stifles the feelings. 

 On education, he says, 'Almost as soon as a boy has 

 acquired the powers of speech, he is shut up many hours a 

 day in a noisome school, secluded from the benefits of ex- 

 ercise and the refreshment of the open air, and tied down to 

 the severe drudgery of learning, what serves only, at such a 

 period of life, to overcharge his memory, and to destroy 

 his native cheerfulness of disposition.' This will please 

 Mr. Edwin Chadwick, whose labours in favour of the half- 

 time system have been so long and valuable — a small 

 portion only, however, of the sanitary work of which he is 

 the great hero. 



Dr. Percival speaks of the havoc produced in every 

 large town by luxury, irregularity, and intemperance, and 

 the pernicious influence of confinement, uncleanliness, and 

 foul air. 



A note in the collected works adds, whether alluding to 

 the time of republication or not, does not appear ; but 

 probably it is so, namely 1807 : ' There are at this time in 

 Manchester no less than 193 houses for retailing spirituous 

 and other liquors ; and sixty-four in the other townships 

 of the parish. At Birmingham the number of public- 

 houses is still greater than at Manchester.' ' A very 

 ingenious friend of mine (probably Dr. Percival's son is 

 speaking) in that place has computed, that the quantity of 

 malt consumed there in the public-houses requires for its 

 growth a compass of land which would be sufficient for the 

 support of 20,000 men.* 



