Public health in relation to air and water / by W.T. Gairdner.

  • William Tennant Gairdner
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public health in relation to air and water / by W.T. Gairdner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    sent the people. How far the causes of these evils are known 1 how 'far they are remediable 1 and how far the public authorities are justified in interfering for their remedy 1—are questions to be determined by the exigencies of the particular case, and the possibilities of remedy otherwise than through the contro] of authority. Now, a very little consideration will teach you that, while the evils that affect the public health are often but too notorious, the causes of them are commonly very complex, and the remedies of correspondingly difficult application. ISTay, more, it is very certain that among the causes of deteriorated health, a great num- ber are almost, if not altogether, beyond the scope of legislation. You cannot, except within very narrow limits, control directly the bad habits, the debased morals, the unruly appetites which engender so many of the ills that flesh is heir to. The tenderest and most helpless age of humanity—that at which the seeds of disease are most easily implanted, and at which mor- tality is largest—is hardly at all within your control, otherwise than in a roundabout and indirect manner. You cannot enter by law the household at all hours, and keep watch over the mother at her daily task of love and duty; nor can you permit her, even in her greatest disgrace and necessity, to devolve upon the community her divinely-imposed and necessary func- tion. To do so is simply to take a responsibility which you have no means of fulfilling • for the disastrous statistics of Foundling Hospitals, in almost every coun-