34 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



whole, is the nature of those evils which cause so much suffering, 

 and yet can be prevented, and what precautions are needful for their 

 prevention. 



These evils are of various kinds and they arise from a variety of 

 causes. Some of these causes are faults on our part, faults of the 

 sufferer, others are due to the conditions which surround us, and for 

 which perhaps we cannot be wholly responsible, as individuals we 

 cannot help them. And I may say that we need not suppose that by 

 our best efforts at co-operation, we shall ever succeed in getting 

 wholly freed from them. They exist in nature, and they are too 

 abundant and too subtle to permit of the hope that our own coarse 

 and limited methods can effect the destruction of them. Our whole 

 endeavour must be to keep ourselves from contact with them, to 

 effect, if we can, their disappearance from around us. Chief among 

 the first set of causes which have been mentioned as resulting in 

 deviations from health, those causes for which the sufferers arethem- 

 selvss responsible, is that habit of excess in eating and in drinking 

 in which the English speaking race especially indulges — it is not 

 intended to say anything which may be objectionable to our 

 temperance friends, but it seems right to say that eating to excess is 

 as injurious, as disagreeable and as immoral as drinking to excess. 

 Some of our apologists have tried to account for this habit, so un- 

 wholesome and such a reproach, by laying it to the account of the 

 vigorous character of the race. "Whatever the race does it does with 

 its might," say they. Perhaps so, in eating and in drinking many 

 of us too often seem to go beyond our might ; we exceed our bodily 

 powers of endurance ; we becloud our intellect, blunt our morals, and 

 upon the whole, injure and debase ourselves a good deal. We are 

 all aware of the besetting sin of our people, so besetting as to have 

 become in a measure a national boast. It may seem a waste of 

 time to speak of it, it is so trite ; but we may reflect that we are 

 speaking of " Health," and that it would be dealing unfairly with our 

 subject, if we omitted all mention of that which produces amongst 

 us a fatality greater than some of the most appalling epidemics. 



We may next mention as a removable cause of trouble, crowding 

 in our abodes, more particularly in our sleeping places. This condi- 

 tion may arise from eith er parsimony or poverty. It was a defect in 

 our economy which early drew the attention of sanitarians and 



