Address on a National League for Physical Education and Improvement : delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Manchester Children's Hospital, February 24th, 1905 / by Sir Lauder Brunton.
- Brunton, Thomas Lauder, Sir, 1844-1916.
- Date:
- [1905]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Address on a National League for Physical Education and Improvement : delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Manchester Children's Hospital, February 24th, 1905 / by Sir Lauder Brunton. 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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![National Lcarinc for Physical Education. This enormous mortality amongst the babies is partly due to the feeble constitution which they inherit from their youthful and weakly mothers, but it is due in much greater extent to the fact that these babies do not receive from their parents the care whicli a bear bestows upon its cubs or a hen upon its chickens. Ignorance, carelessness, the difficulties connected with the milk supply, and last but not least the indifference, neglect, and j^overty begotten by habits of chronic drunkenness, are, as stated in the Medical Eeport of your Hospital, the causes of mortality which no amount of excellence in hospitals can prevent. How then is this evil to be met ? There are already in existence a great many charitable and beneficent agencies all working to comlnat the evils which we deplore, and so many are there that one would say to bring another into being was not only superfluous but injurious. Yet we all know ihe story from “ Hilsop’s Fables ” which delighted our childhood of the old man and the bundle of sticks, each stick being weak and easily] broken by itself, but when united into a bundle being able to resist any strain. How, the agencies at present at work may be likened to the individual sticks. Each one is working at its own department, but they are all isolated. Many of them do not know of each other’s existence, and so they lack union and do not possess the strength to accomplish the end desired. It is now proposed to establish a new League, a National League for Physical Education and Improvement. Tins League is not to be another stick added to tlie bundle, it is to be the band which will unite them together and give them the strength which they individually lack, and I thank you most cordially for the warm sympathy you express with it, and for the support you promise it in the Eeport of your Hospital. As stated in the draft scheme, the object of the proposed League is not to displace any of the agencies at present at work, but to make them known to one another, to ascertain how their work can best be supplemented, where it is deficient, and to extend the benefits of physical training throughout the whole country. In order that the League shall fulfil the purpose for which it is designed it will require to be subdivided, firstly, according to the places](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22430544_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
