Epidemics considered with relation to their common nature, and to climate and civilization : in two lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, November 1855 / by Southwood Smith.

  • Smith, Southwood, 1788-1861.
Date:
1856
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Epidemics considered with relation to their common nature, and to climate and civilization : in two lectures delivered at the Philosophical Institution, Edinburgh, November 1855 / by Southwood Smith. 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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    .OG DANGER THAT CIVILIZATION MAY DECLINE. combined works which are indispensable for checking these ma- ladies, and if you will not apply for such powers and will not use them, on your own heads are the shame and the crime of the needless loss of life—the needless infliction of suffering. 2. We see that epidemics are not made by a Divine law the necessary condition of man’s existence upon earth. The boon of life is not marred with this penalty. The great laws of nature, which are God’s ordinances in their regular course and appointed operation, do form and give oflf around us, products which are injurious to us; but He has given us senses to per- ceive them, and reason to devise the means of avoiding them, and epidemics arise and spread because we will not regard the one, nor use the other. 3. We see that there are circumstances which render it doubtful whether civilization has yet attained a point that places it beyond the danger of retrogression. States in some respects of higher civilization than our own have relapsed into barbarism. There is indeed one circumstance which may give us hope; there is one humanizing principle which is now at least recognised and in partial operation, of which there is no trace in any nation of antiquity. I mean the principle of kindness as a governing influence, distinguished from the prin- ciple of brute force. That the whole human race is one family, that the people of every colour, clime, language, government, and faith, are one brotherhood, and that the same law of love which is the bond of the union, strength, and happiness of a single family, is equally binding on the universal family of mankind, are the fundamental and distinguishing principles of our religion; and in proportion to our conformity in our private and public life to the spirit of these divine principles, advancement in civiliza- tion is certain ; relapse into barbarism is impossible. But as yet there is no such conformity. We neglect the education of the people, quarrelling about the mode, and postponing the thing. We devote to a life of absorbing labour the child and the youth ungrounded in the elements of knowledge, untrained to habits of self-restraint, thereby dooming the man to the