Geology in relation to sanitary science / by Alfred Haviland.

  • Haviland, Alfred, -1903
Date:
[1879]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Geology in relation to sanitary science / by Alfred Haviland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    only absolutely but relatively ? And do we not find these declen- sions from the normal standard more abundant among the civilized than the naturally barbarous and uncivilized ? And if so, why is it ? Is it not because we have fallen short in our pursuit of the necessary knowledge of how to live. We have gone on living and breeding in limited areas; we have confined ourselves to favoured spots, and have spoiled them. Man has not only spoiled many of the sites which his ancestors wisely selected as vantage grounds against the foe, the flood, and the drought; but is hourly spoiling his own form by his artificial habits, and laying at the same time the foundation for a still further departure from a natural standard in his offspring. He is polluting the soil on which his habitations stand, he is befouling his water- courses and springs, and he is poisoning the air he breathes. He has thus created surroundings from which he can with difficulty escape; and not content with the natural disease-poisons with which the fens, the tropical lagoons and deltas of the great rivers abound he creates around his own and neighbour's dwelling the conditions that will produce newer and specific forms of disease which disfigure, disable, and kill those nearest and dearest to him. Man has indeed made his own haunts the haunts of fevers and very magazines of organic poisons; so that the soil, which might have been a perennial source of wealth and health, has become one of disease and death. It is humiliating to find that branches of science which have been studied for more than two thousand five hundred years should have advanced so little towards the amelioration of the evils with which man is naturally aud artificially surrounded. I have said that man has spoiled many of the fair sites on which lie has pitched his tent. Also that he has spoiled himself. I have hinted that there are some places which, without man's interference have been the sources of disease. Hippocrates, who lived between two and three thousand years ago, was a physician, and the founder of medicine. He was in advance of the age in which he lived, and in many things in advance of that in which we live. This extraordinary man lived at a time when there were as his cotemporaries some of the most brilliant men the Greek Islands ever produced. He taught at that remote period how necessary it was to study the nature of the soil in relation to disease, the qualities of the waters which either sprang from it or has flowed over it. He laid down certain rules, which are applicable now to the same locality wherein he practised, as to the selection of sites, &c. ; and he wrote a philosophical treatise on airs, places, and waters, which may be read now with advantage, and especially by those who think there is nothing like the learning of the nineteenth century; for they will there see clear]y and dis- tinctly shown that diseases have a geographical distribution, and that the soil on which man lives must be studied by the physician who would wish to combat successfully with disease. The graphic description of the effect of the swampy country