XV. 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
By the President, Professor John Attfield, E.R.S., etc. 
Delivered at the Annual Meeting , 15 th February , 1887, at Watford. 
Ladies and Gentlemen,-— 
A Natural History Society has few higher functions than that 
of disseminating knowledge of the laws of nature. And of all the 
relationships of natural law, whether as regards the universe, the 
world, or mankind, few can have more widespread interest for man 
than those which conduce to his own welfare. That welfare may 
be regarded from personal points of view, as the religious and the 
hygienic, or from the general standpoints of politics and of society. 
Last year your President had the honour of addressing you on the 
laws of nature generally—the laws themselves—and some of 
their relations to religion; he now ventures to treat of their 
relation to health. He ventures to consider, for an hour, the 
broad natural principles that govern health; and to consider 
principles only, for the details would occupy many Addresses. 
The Laws of Nature in Relation to Health. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Perfect health. Picture such health. The health of, say, full- 
grown youth under the most free and favourable conditions. Per¬ 
fect physical health; attended by perfect purity of mind and 
perfect strength of brain, associated with perfect development and 
cultivation of all the powers, and accompanied by freedom from all 
care and anxiety. Purther, picture this health as commencing 
in the cradle, increasing in fulness towards manhood and woman¬ 
hood, and extending to the age of a hundred or a hundred and four 
or five years, death then being only as the unawakening from 
sleep. That is perfect health. 
Health more or less perfect, regulated by perfect natural laws. 
Endeavour for a moment to realise the general character of the 
more prominent of these laws. The comprehensive, far-reaching, 
all-pervading laws under which is supplied to us the light to which 
we wake in the morning and the warmth without which we should 
never wake; the laws governing the poise and motion of the earth, 
the moon, the sun, and all the spheres of the universe, yet governing 
our position and our movements on the surface of one of the smaller 
planets at the bottom of a sea of air. Glance at the laws that 
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VOL. IV.—PART V. 
