43 



7//z February, i< 



Professor E. A. Letts, Ph.D., F.R.S.E., F.C.S., in the Chair 



Dr. J. A. Lindsay gave a Lecture on 

 THE ALLEGED DECAY OF NATIONAL PHYSIQUE. 



The past year has witnessed the revival of an ancient 

 controversy. Amidst the rejoicings of the Royal Jubilee and 

 the general indulgence in complacent anticipations of future 

 advance, the voice of Cassandra has not been wanting. We 

 have been entreated to be warned in time that a subtle danger 

 threatens the commonwealth in its tenderest point, and that 

 the amazing material prosperity of the age is being purchased 

 at the ruinous cost of a fatal declension in physical vigour. 

 The alarm was first sounded at the meeting of the British 

 Medical Association in Dublin last August, by Sir Thomas 

 Crawford, Director General of the Army Medical Department, 

 who found ground for serious uneasiness in the high per- 

 centage of rejections among the recruits at present offering 

 themselves for the army. His views received endorsement at 

 the meeting of the British Association at Manchester, on which 

 occasion a paper was read by Dr. Milner Fothergill on " The 

 Effects of Town Life upon the Human Body," and in which he 

 argued that we are rapidly becoming a nation of town- 

 dwellers, and that town life is in the end fatal to robustness 

 of physique. 



The question may well engage our most earnest attention, 

 as physical fitness, soundness of limb, heart, and brain, is in 

 the ultimate issue the only permanent charter of a nation's 

 greatness. It is true the progress of civilisation has done 



