National Health. 57 



relief of human suflFering, had a low and dangerous state of 

 health. Through the wide publication of the Registrar- 

 General's returns, the words public health had come to be nearly 

 represented by the birth and death rates. A good state of 

 health, according to this, meant a high birth-rate and a low 

 death-rate. The question was — did those figures give an 

 intelligent or correct representation of the state of the national 

 health ? He thought they did not for the following reasons. 

 A high birth-rate was only a sign of national health when the 

 great majority of those births were healthy. A low death-rate 

 usually meant that the average span of human life was legthen- 

 ing, aiid that the life-preserving appliances — sanitary, medical, 

 and philanthropic — were in good order ; but it might also mean 

 that a very large proportion of the drunken, dissipated, and 

 diseased population, and their weak and degenerate offspring^ 

 were preserved alive by the efforts of philanthropy, aided by 

 medical and sanitary science. In such a case a low death-rate 

 might also mean a low state of national health. Even the 

 absence of zymotic disease might not on the whole be an 

 unmixed blessing. There was little doubt that modern sanitary 

 science, if allowed full scope to act, could exterminate the 

 cholera, smallpox, typhus fever, and many other epidemic 

 diseases which plagued humanity, but under the existing 

 circumstances of civilized humanity, it was doubtful if such a 

 course would greatly improve the national health. When the 

 propagation of the human species was done by the healthy 

 members of society, and not, as at present, chiefly by the 

 diseased, drunken, and dissipated, then, and not till then, will 

 the extinction of all epidemic disease be an unmixed blessing to 

 humanity. In his opinion the figures of the Registrar-General, 

 although perfectly accurate and most perfectly compiled, did 

 not fully represent the true state of the public health. They 

 rather tended to mislead the public into a false sense of security 

 by proving the public health to be good when it was quite 

 possible that the national health might be in a low and most 

 unsatisfactory condition. For example, according to the 



