THE PRESENT EVOLUTION OF MAN — PHYSICAL 285 



less of uniformity in all penal establishments, whatever 

 difference there may be among them in their other 

 arrangements, such as the very various kinds of discipline 

 and occupation. 



" The same hygienic disadvantages arising out of the 

 manner of living among confined bodies of people, 

 which we have just been considering, contribute not a 

 little also to the prevalence of consumption, be it more 

 or less, among the population living at large ; and that 

 holds good equally for the well-to-do classes and for 

 the poor. Here, again, there is no mistaking the draw- 

 backs in the mode of life that have come along with 

 the progress of modern civilization. 'The prevalence 

 of consumption among the families of our villagers and 

 farmers,' says an American writer, ' can be shown, we 

 believe, to have kept step with the deviation of these 

 families from their former frugal, active, and industrious 

 manner of life, and their adoption of the absurd practices 

 which characterize the mode of our fashionable classes 

 in the larger cities.' Once more, I think the stress 

 should be laid on spending the time amidst bad ventila- 

 tion indoors, in living-rooms, but more particularly in 

 bedrooms. In the latter the human being spends 

 nearly half of his existence; and the rooms assigned 

 as bedrooms by the better classes are too often chosen, 

 not on considerations of health, but out of a desire to 

 have the greatest amount of comfort in the public 

 rooms of the house. 



" But the dark side of civilization nowhere shows its 

 influence for spreading consumption more decidedly 

 than in those disastrous outbreaks of the disease among 

 peoples who were wont to live perfectly free from all 

 restraint and conventionality, but have now come into 

 contact with Europeans, and have adopted European 

 manners and vices. Of that we have sad examples in 

 the ravages of consumption among certain tribes of 

 North American Indians, among the natives of several 

 groups of islands in the Pacific, among the Maoris of 

 New Zealand, and in Algiers." — Hirsch, vol. iii. pp. 

 222-5. 



"The same circumstances serve to account for the 



