National health / By Henry W. Acland.

  • Acland, Henry W. (Henry Wentworth), 1815-1900.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National health / By Henry W. Acland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    the individuals of which the nation is composed ; being attached to individual character, and handed on from generation to generation, mo- dified however by individual education, or those great catastrophes which, like subsoiling in a barren land, bring about fresh combinations, and give birth to products good or bad, better or worse, as the laws, moral and physical, which regulate the combination, may compel. It may be alleged against these fundamental conceptions that National Health is a fiction of the mind, that no such collective physical con- dition exists. The objection would be one of words. Family constitution and hereditary taint certainly exist; and a multitude of indi- viduals forming one army, may, by the opera- tion of moral causes, go anywhere and do any- thing, or may be without power, without will, without hope. We must not stop to discuss in full by what subtle links families are bound into peoples, peoples into races; but limiting our view to our own immediate nation, which may serve as an instance for all, consider briefly hoiv the physical condition of our people has been at-