A national health policy / by Harry Roberts.

  • Harry Roberts
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A national health policy / by Harry Roberts. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/136 page 17
    ledge goes, in the thirteenth century, if not earlier. On the other hand, a successful code of hygienic life cannot be created in vacuo, and applied like a poultice to men and women. A health policy, like every other policy, has to be based, if it is to be effective, on the inherent impulses of man. And in these we have a very broad foundation. The self-preservative, the maternal, and the herd or social, instinct, between them, provide all the driving force we need. But our instincts act only within limits, and it is to the disregard of these limits that much political failure is due. Sentimentalism is a deadly sin, and the spelling of Humanity with a capital H is at the root of much cruelty as well as hypocrisy. Human love is finite ; so is human imagination, and, consequently, sympathy. We all know how sympathy and pride tend to become attenuated as we get further and further away from ourselves and our families. Most of us experi¬ ence a very real pride in the more successful achieve¬ ments of ourselves ; and many of us not much less in those of our families and of our personal friends. Most of us are capable of considerable elation over the fine deeds and possessions of our town or village; some, though less, over those of our county, and—especially in moments of stress or danger—of our native land. There, for most of us, our social instinct, for all practical purposes, ends ; though a few extend their sympathies wider yet. It is nearly always easy to appeal to the self-preser¬ vative instinct. And history shows how readily, where justice rules, man responds to an intelligent appeal to his civic pride. Love of country can rarely be counted on as a motive for daily acts and efforts in normal times. Now all this is very relevant to political organisa¬ tion, whether we are immediately concerned with health or wealth. There are, it is true, certain great administrative generalities which depend very little for their success on the intelligent and willing co-operation N.H.P. C
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3