Morning journal and courier., 1888-01-02
TOWN Vs. COUNTRY LIFE.
The Relative Effects on the Physique.

The Relative Effects on the Physique. From the Insurance Journal.l
 very interesting paper on the above sub ject was read by Dr. J. Milner Fothergill at meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Manchester.
 He said that as hospital physician he had been struck by the physical infsriority of the denizens of towns as compared with country people. That town residence impaired the physique was a fact observed by Lugol Hayles, Walsh, Cantlie and others. Special inquiries set on foot had resulted in proving the great rarity of pure bred cockney of | the fourth generation. Of old, life was practically country life, with walled town here and there. Now urban populations
 ceed in number the country folk of this coun- | try. Of old strong physique for work or war was the one thing to be coveted. Now | the active brain was what was required for l success in the battle of life In the middle ages the weakly retired to the cloister and the convent, while the race was reproduced by the strong. Now ths soasTFsng ot the weakly could be reared by costly prepared foods. The children of to day were alike the products of the weakly and the strong. The deterioration of town population could be seen to be reversion towards an earlier and lower ethnic form. While the residents in the country remained Anglo-Danes, town dwelIers approached the smaller and darker Celto-Iberian race. This could readily be seen by comparing the population encountered in Shoreditch and Whitechapel with the mas sive folk seen in country towns on market day. It could be demonstrated by visit to Madam Tussaud's in spring and comparing the crowd of small, dark, living beings with the substantial fair personages sitting there in efigy. A visit in autumn, when the visl- tors were largely excursionists from the country, brought out the contrast of town dwellers and country very markedly. In
 looking into the forces in action in producing this physical impairment, one factor certain ly was the forced development of the brain in the town child compared to the country child. The stolidity of the country child, compared to the precocious development of
 the town child, was largely due to the mona tonous existence of the one as compared to
 the life of excitement led by the other. The
 demands of the nervous system in the town
 child led to a comparative starving of the
 other tissues of the body, while in the coun-
 try child all grew alike in fit proportion.
 The digestive organs specially suffered, and the town dweller could not eat the food so largely in request in the country-psstry, cakes, meat-p1es, Yorkshire pudding, Nor folk dumplings and Cornish pastries-becaase such food caused in him dyspepsia In or der to avoid the pains of indigestion the town dweller ate fish, bread and meat. Els pecially was he fond of the sapid, tasty meat which was so easily procured in towns But with the indoor life led, combined with an impure atmosphere, the oxidizing processes were defective, and the presence of excre- mentitious matters in the blood set up in
 time that change in the kidneys and else | where commonly spoken of as ''chronic
 Bright's disease,'' and for which it was now | proposed to substitute the term 'vasorenal change" as more applicable. Another con-
 sequence of the impairment of the digestive organs was the inability to take fat, by which the system was predisposed to pulmonary phthisis, consumption and Bright's disease, separately or combined, and the maladies ,soI, k1aa OE l TTlor town populations, while their children sue
 cumbed to the maladies of childhood. Town life was thus destructive, especially ill those who ware born and reared in large towns.