ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 19 



often spoken of as albuminoids, we cannot yet determine, but I 

 crave your attention for a few moments to consider the origin and 

 final destiny of some of the nitrogenous bodies I have mentioned. 

 The economical evolution of human energy, is a problem that is 

 attracting a good deal of attention, but the human machine, in 

 converting the potential energy of bread and cheese into muscular 

 and mental activity, or into some equivalent work value, has to 

 dispose of effete waste matter — excretory products — that may be 

 compared to the smoke, ashes and scoriae of the steam engine ; for 

 as in raising energy by means of steam we have waste products, 

 so we have three excretory products expelled from the human 

 body. They are: — (1) Carbon dioxide; (2) Urea and uric acid, 

 together with a number of bodies of greater interest to the 

 pathologist than to the sanitarian ; (3) Surplus undigested food, 1 

 cellulose and indigestible fibre, embodying the waste — food-ashes 

 called excreta. 



Now all these substances, once outside man's body, recoil on 

 him, offending all his senses, while under many circumstances they 

 become a danger and a menace to his very life, but more 

 particularly do they effect the well-being of his near neighbours ; 

 it is but a truism to say, that man's duty to his neighbour, there- 

 fore, includes also the continual adjustment of his internal 

 relations to those external relations of the State, of which he is a 

 member. This danger becomes accentuated, the offensiveness more 

 pronounced, the more man becomes civilised, and the more closely 

 men congregate together in towns and cities ; I emphasise the 

 latter condition, because the further men live apart, the easier of 

 solution is the difficulty. We have then something to be gotten 

 rid of. How ancient man, and how man in a state of nature, 

 does get rid of it is obvious and known to all. 2 



How the question was severely let alone, down to within a half 

 century ago, I need not particularise to any great extent, 



1 The greater the amount of the latter the worse for the individual, who 

 in this respect is the slave of unproductive energy. 



2 For the Mosaic injunction, see Deuteronomy, xxiii. 12 & 13, R.Ver. 



