[Pure air, and its influence upon health].

Date:
[between 1800 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: [Pure air, and its influence upon health]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    PURE AIR, AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON HEALTH. MY Lord, Ladies, and Gentlemen,^! am here to-night to deliver the first of a series of six Health Lectures for the Peopk to be given this winter by the lecturers of the Man- chester and Salford Sanitary Association. But before I pass o the immediate subject of my lecture it may, perhaps be well to ask why it is that we have thus associated ourselves m the common object of saving hfe. For all flesh to die Is Nature's due ; nor is there any one Of mortals with assurance he shall last The coming morrow. Why, then, should we try to postpone the inevitable fate of mankind? The efforts made, especially by members of my own profession, to prevent disease and to postpone death must appear something extraordinary to those who regard our vocation merely as a mode of earning a living. The attempt seems to be, and is, so directly contrary to our own interests that it could only be accounted for either by crediting us with a soldier-like desire to grapple with the foes that we have been trained to encounter—to a life-saving instinct—or else to some ignoble terror of death both for ourselves or for other people. But none of these would represent the true origin of the impulse to save life that actuates most medical men and the members of this association. Death has for the medical man fewer terrors, probably, than for most men. He knows well how seldom it comes in any terrible form as the result of disease ; how frequently the end is peaceful or mercifully passed in unconsciousness; how often it proves a welcome release from suffering, fatigue, or sorrow.