PUBLIC HEALTH.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 611, 15 October 1913, Page 3

PUBLIC HEALTH.

o An interesting address on the "Value of Public Health'"' was given by Sir Robsrt Stout last week at the meeting of the "Moral and Physical Health Society/' held in Esperanto Rooms. Dr Piatt-Mills presided. The lecturer declared that ancient Greece possessed the highest type of human development, although in area it was smaller than the province of Wellington. It was this that made Greece or:a of the pre-eminent eotintriea in the history of the world. The type of humanity to be found in the prison v?B3 inefficient and the criminal population of a country was largely composed of physcal degenerates. Sickness in a country meant loss of time, loss of labour and loss of efficiency. Inherited problems of constitution rendered the population more susceptible to epidemics and other strains on health and vigour. Dark races had gone dovvn before the white, but if the white race allowed itself and efficiency to diminish the same fate would overtake it in the long run. The Japanese in Hawaii took such eanitary precautions that they were to-day flourishing far better than the white people. Thrift and health were absolutely necessary for the preservation of a people, and of its posterity. To ensure health all such poisons as alcohol and tobacco should ba given up. No fewer than 220,000,000 cigarettes were smoked in New Zealand last year. Smoking injured and lowered the vitality of young people, and everything that lowered the vitality of the population was an injury to country itself. Unless health, thrift, and efficiency Were cultivated, as a people we would go down in the struggle for existence just as the Tasmanian race went down. Reverence for human life was the basis of civilisation, and the people that did not reverence it were barbarians. There could be no real reverence of human life unelss great attention was paid to the matter of public health.