Is there anything unreasonable in all of this? Is it outside of the
other manifestations of life? Let us take disease. Clearly this is
affected by heat and cold; beyond question it is largely the result of
inherited susceptibilities. Poverty or wealth has much to do with
disease. Many poor people die of tuberculosis, for instance, where the
well-to-do would live. The span of life of the rich is greater than that
of the poor. The long list of diseases from under-nourishment is mainly
from the poor. Age affects disease, increasing the hazard of death. The
food supply seriously affects health. Ignorance is a prolific cause of
disease. Or, to speak more correctly, the lack of education and
knowledge prevents men from living so that sickness will not overtake
them, or so that they can recover when they are attacked by disease. The
strength or weakness of the nervous system is a material factor.
The times of life, too, when the ravages of disease are greatest are as
distinct as those of crime. And barring the fact that the few who are
left at seventy rapidly drop away, the time of the greatest disasters
would rather closely correspond with that of crime. Tuberculosis and
insanity, for instance, take their greatest toll in the period of
adolescence between fifteen and twenty-five years, just as crime does,
and the percentage of both begins falling off rapidly after thirty.
Accidents can be as surely classified, and many of them in the same way.
The poor naturally have more accidents than the rich; the ignorant more
than the educated; the poorly-fed more than the well-nourished.
Accidents are directly affected by climatic conditions; they are
affected by human temperaments, by the strength and weakness of the
nervous system, by the environment, by heredity, and by all the manifold
stimuli that act on the human machine.
Legislatures have long since recognized that crime does not really stand
as a separate and isolated phenomenon in human life. They have long
since passed laws to safeguard the community against loss by accident
and disease. A lengthening list of statutes can be found in our code
regulating dangerous machinery, the operation of railroads, the running
of automobiles, the construction of buildings, the isolation of the
tubercular and those suffering from other contagious diseases, the
amount of air-space for each person in tenement and work-shop, the use
of fire-escapes and all of man's conduct and activity for the
prevention of accidents and disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account