The danger of deterioration of race from the too rapid increase of great cities / by John Edward Morgan.

  • Morgan, John Edward, 1829-1892.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The danger of deterioration of race from the too rapid increase of great cities / by John Edward Morgan. 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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    medical advice at our hospitals and dispensaries. Additional confirmation of what I have stated will be found in the large number of military recruits who fail to come up to that standard of bodily fitness which the medical referees are instructed to insist upon. I have been informed by an officer specially associated with the super- intendence of this service that in some of the manufacturing districts four out of every five men sent up by the sergeants for medical in- spection are rejected on the ground of physical disqualification. Let us next proceed to enquire into the causes of this degeneracy—and the extent to which it prevails; and, in so doing, let us specially consider how far it is to be ascribed to the influence of a city life. In my inter- course with the poorer classes, I have frequently interrogated them respecting their own birth- places, and those of their parents; and, in numerous instances, have been much struck by the difference in physical development between the indigenous population and those persons who have migrated into the town in adult life.