Public health : a popular introduction to sanitary sicence. : Being a history of the prevalent and fatal diseases of the English population from the earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century / By William A. Guy, M.B. Cantab., F.R.S. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.

  • Guy, William A. (William Augustus), 1810-1885.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Public health : a popular introduction to sanitary sicence. : Being a history of the prevalent and fatal diseases of the English population from the earliest times to the end of the eighteenth century / By William A. Guy, M.B. Cantab., F.R.S. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    Economic Science and Statistics attributes to it notliing short of an economical revolution here in England j ^nd historians of repute have attributed the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the pestilences which swept off the adult male population, and left the then proud mistress of the world an easy prey to the barbarians. But these opinions, though they served to confirm my first impressions of the great importance of Sanitary Science, did not take me by surprise, for I called to mind the confident statement of Sir Gilbert Blane, that if the mortality of the British Navy during the war with Ame- rica had obtained throughout the French revolutionary war, our stock of seamen would have been used up, and men would not have been procurable by any bounties, however exorbitant. So that it was not the seaman- ship and fighting qualities of our sailors alone that carried us triumphantly through that terrible contest, but a re- duced mortality due to the sanitary discoveries and reforms which first recruited our population by saving lives in infancy and childhood, and then cut off from our forces •by sea and land, the destructive supplies of jail-fever, scurvy, dysentery, and small-pox. I feel, then, that we are dealing with a subject, the im- portance of which it is impossible to deny and difficult to exaggerate. Let us look closely into its aims and scope, the sources of the knowledge it accumulates and applies, the scientific methods it employs, its past triumphs, its future prospects. The aim of Sanitary Science is to prevent disease, pre- serve health, and prolong life—to maintain the whole people in the highest efficiency for the labours of peace or the struggles of war. If we prefer the term Hygiene, we may divide it into two branches—a private hygiene if we address ourselves to individuals, a public hygiene if we deal with nations or communities.