The effects of arts, trades, and professions, and of civic states and habits of living, on health and longevity : with suggestions for the removal of many of the agents which produce disease, and shorten the duration of life / by C. Turner Thackrah.

Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The effects of arts, trades, and professions, and of civic states and habits of living, on health and longevity : with suggestions for the removal of many of the agents which produce disease, and shorten the duration of life / by C. Turner Thackrah. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    After all, I am aware that health is to most persons a disagreeable subject of inquiry, whether it relates to the individuals themselves or the community. It implies a distrust of our sanity. We dislike especially such gloomy inferences as the returns of population and burials afford. We do not wish to see that there is a greater mortality in our own neighbourhood than in other parts of the country ; and hence we try to avoid the annoyance, and preclude investigation by supposing either the inferences erroneous, or the causes which produce this excess of mortality, irremediable. Is this wise?—is this manly? Is it the part of reason to shrink from inquiry ? Either diseases are artificially multiplied, or they are not. If inquiry prove the affirmative, surely self-interest, as well as benevolence, demands a full investigation into the causes of the evil :—if the negative, we shall rest con- tented, gratified with the idea that our employments are not baneful, and that the excess of mortality is the inflic- tion of Providence, not the agency of man. Most persons, who reflect on the subject, will be in- clined to admit that our employments are in a considerable degree injurious to health, but they believe, or profess to believe, that the evils cannot be counteracted, and urge that an investigation of such evils can produce only pain and discontent. From a reference to fact and observation I reply, that in many of our occupations, the injurious agents might be immediately removed or diminished* * Roberton, in his book on Medical Police, makes the following state- ment “ The principal general sources of disease in this, and perhaps in every other country, I believe, with very few exceptions, to exist in external, and for the most part removable causes ; but, from our fami- liarity with numberless circumstances which are unquestionably injurious to our comforts, and even destructive to our constitutions, we, in the common bustle of life, insensibly so overlook them, as scarcely ever to regard them in a just point of view. Many are willing to allow that these sources are injurious to their comforts, but few believe them capable of ruining their constitutions.”