Address delivered by Edwin Lankester ... on public health : at the Social Science Congress at Sheffield, on the 9th of October, 1865.

  • Lankester, Edwin, 1814-1874.
Date:
[1865]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address delivered by Edwin Lankester ... on public health : at the Social Science Congress at Sheffield, on the 9th of October, 1865. 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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    ferred upon them. I have alluded to some of the great facts upon a knowledge of which our healthy existence depends. It is in vain that the Legislature enacts a plan upon which houses shall be built to ensure ventilation, unless the inhabitants of those houses understand the worth of fresh air. In vain is fresh water brought to our doors, if in our indolence and ignorance, we refuse to use it. There must be intelligence both in the legislator and those for whom he legislates, if we are to take advantage of our present knowledge of the laws of life to secure us from disease and death. When one sees how little is the effort made to introduce into our general system of education a knowledge of those great laws of physics, chemistry, and physiology, on which our life depends, one is filled with dismay at the prospect before us. When the leading educationists in our country are carrying on a controversy as to whether in our examinations the highest rates of marks shall be given to classics, mathematics, history, or modern languages, one feels that they are quarrelling over dry bones, and forgetting all that which gives life and reality to our existence. It is not till the great facts of the natural sciences shall take a proper position in the studies of our universities, where the majority of our statesmen are instructed, that we can expect them to be taught in the middle class schools, where our vestrymen gain the elements of their education. It is only when those who instruct weekly in our pulpits, and influ- ence the education of our lower class schools, arc themselves taught the great laws by which the Creator governs the life of the world, that we can expect our working classes to exercise that judgment and self-control with regard to their health, the want of which causes the sacrifice of holocausts of victims amongst them every year. When I consider the sacredness of human life, when I know how sacred we all regard it, I feel as if it were a bathos which I ought to avoid, to remind you how costly a thing is disease and death. But it is true the gain of 100,000 lives annually would pay ten times over the cost of all the exertions that would arise to secure them for life and for their country. But I will not pursue the subject. I leave now the question of the public health in your hands, to work out its great problems, as amongst the most patriotic and the noblest to which the human mind can be devoted.