A third contribution to a knowledge of the influence of employments upon health / [William A. Guy].

  • Guy, William A. (William Augustus), 1810-1885
Date:
[1844]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A third contribution to a knowledge of the influence of employments upon health / [William A. Guy]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    on the supposition that the waste is in the same proportion in those districts as in the metropolis, gives us as the number thus sacrificed 4882, of which number 1000 deaths seem to be fairly traceable to the unwhole¬ some condition of workshops and factories, and the remainder to the state of their dwellings, added to habits of intemperance, and the priva¬ tions to which they are occasionally exposed. What part of this waste is to be attributed to causes over which the poor have virtually no control, and what part to their own habits of life, it is of course impossible to state; but after making a liberal allow'ance for the effects of intemperance, and the occasional use of scanty or unwholesome food, there can be no room to doubt that a fearful w^aste of human life at present takes place, and that much of this may be prevented by the improvement of dw^ellings and workshops. Such improvement would doubtless bring with it, a.s a necessary consequence, a great improvement in the habits of the labouring class; for it has been clearly proved, and is, in fact, a necessary consequence, that all causes of exhaustion are indirectly causes of intemperance. Some experience of the poor, and inquiries expressly directed to this point, have convinced me that they are led into this baneful habit not so much by a love of intemperance and of its treacherous pleasures, as by the opinion that spirituous liquors are necessary to the support of their strength. Those who use strong exertion in their employments drink because they think that without spirituous liquors they could not do their work; but those who lead sedentary employments are often compelled to drink that they may neutralize the debilitating effect of an atmospheie which in extreme cases may be, with little exaggeration, described as combining the temperature of an oven with the foul air of a sewer. If they had pure air, they would soon cease to regard spiri¬ tuous liquors as necessary to their existence, and the habits which grew out of a supposed necessity, might be fairly left to the correcting in¬ fluence of experience and example. If those evils were once corrected over which the labouring class have no control, they would not be slow to perfect the work of a wise and far-seeing legislation. Hitherto the attention of the public has been directed chiefly to the waste of human life, and the consequent misery and expense caused by fevers due to the bad drainage of towms and streets, and the defective construction of the houses of the poor ; but those who have so success¬ fully laboured to rouse the public to a sense of these fearful evils, and ol the responsibilities growing out of them, have been ignorant of, or have disregarded the more silent and stealthy ravages of a disease which is as surely the result of foul air, overcrowding, and confinement, as fever itself of deficient drainage and unwholesome habitations. If the condi¬ tion of the dwellings of our poorer classes is justly chargeable with the fevers to which they are constantly falling victims, to the state of oui workshops and our long hours of work is as certainly to be attributed a large proportion of the cases of consumption which form so fearful an item in our mortuary registers. If the entire population of this countiy could be surrounded by influences as wlmlesome as those to whictj the higher classes owe their better health,- longer life, and coin])arati\e immunity from consumption, the number of cases of ])ulmnnary consum])- tion would be greatly reduced, and some thousands of the imjst valuable part of our ])opulation miglit be saved. This rough estimate may l)e