4^ Decay of National Physique. 



He thought, therefore, we are safe in concluding that, while 

 town populations are apt to drift into injurious dietetic habits, 

 they are constantly tending towards a wider knowledge and a 

 more correct practice. The danger from lack of amusement and 

 physical exercise is being combatted with more or less success. 



With reference to the dangers arising from the facilities exis- 

 ting in large towns for the spread of communicable disease, much 

 has been done to mitigate them, but much remains. There 

 ought to be compulsory notification of infectious diseases. The 

 mere existence of such diseases is in a very large degree the 

 measure of popular apathy or timidity. Typhus fever should 

 be as completely unknown as the plague of the middle ages, and 

 the virulence of typhoid would be abated by a rigid adherence 

 to the necessary measures of sanitation. While much remains 

 to be done, much has been accomplished. The various Public 

 Health Acts have proved of immense service, as statistics con- 

 clusively show. According to Dr. Buchanan's report to the 

 Privy Council, the sanitary regulations of recent years have 

 effected a reduction in the mortality from one important 

 disease — typhoid fever — amounting in many of our largest 

 towns actually to from 30 to 70 per cent. Typhus fever is 

 now unknown in many parts of England and Scotland. It 

 is, unhappily, still endemic in Ireland — one of the many 

 outward signs of the poverty and squalor existing in this 

 island. 



Having dealt briefly with the remedies for over-pressure, the 

 lecturer said it is manifest that any attempt to guage the 

 physique of the present day as compared with that of past 

 generations is beset with the almost insuperable difficulty of 

 finding data for anything like an exact comparison. We 

 cannot bring the dead back to live and test their thews and 

 sinews with those of the living. We cannot match the 

 knights of old with the heroes of the present cricket ground or 

 tennis court ; but if we could, he believed the moderns would 

 give a good account of themselves. The armour of our 

 ancestors proves that the moderns are at least equal to them 

 in physical development, and the. records of the Alpine Club, 



