Civics and health / by William H. Allen ... with an introduction by William T. Sedgwick.

  • William H. Allen
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Civics and health / by William H. Allen ... with an introduction by William T. Sedgwick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    Nature Back says I should not have gone to this dinner. But I was compelled to go. I know I am going to others. I cannot do my work unless I overdraw my current health account. Nature Fore tells me that effective cooperation with others will frequently require me to eat at the dinner hour of others, to retire at others' sleeping time, to wear what others will approve, to violate natural law. But Nature Fore also tells me how to build up a health reserve so that I can meet these emergencies without endangering my health credit. Nature Back demands dress reform. Nature Fore tells me that I can march in step with my contemporaries without either attracting attention or discrediting and affronting natural law. Passion for the natural has effected numerous reforms in dress, diet, and social habits, until commerce provides a natural adaptation of practically every fashion. With regard to few things is it necessary to-day for any one who reads magazines to do violence to bodily health for fashion's sake. We may wear what we will, eat what we prefer, decline what is unnatural for us, without inviting censure. The debauches of those unfortunate peo- ple who live an unnatural, purposeless existence, affect such a small number that their laws need not be considered here. Natural law makes obedience to itself attractive; hence commerce is rapidly learning to cater to distaste for the unnatural. With few exceptions, only temporary con- cessions to unnatural living are required in order to dress and act conventionally. Nature Back throws little light upon conditions necessary for modern labor. It can do nothing but demand the aboli- tion of the factory, the big store, the tenement, the school. Nature Fore says we cannot abolish the means of working out the highest forms of cooperation. But we can make them compatible with natural living. We can modify con- ditions so that earning a livelihood will not compel workers
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