PUBLIC HEALTH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1159, 16 October 1913, Page 4

PUBLIC HEALTH.

An interesting address on the “Value of Public Health” was given by Sir Robert Stout at Wellington recently. 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 one of the preeminent countries in the history of the world. The type of humanity to be found in a prison was inefficient, and the criminal population of a country was largely composed of physical degenerates. Sickness in a country meant loss ot lime, loss of labour, and loss of efficiency. Inherited problems of constitution rendered a population more susceptible to epidemics and other strains on health and vigour. Dark races had gone down before the white, but if the white race allowed its health and efficiency to diminish, the same fate would overtake it in the long run. The Japanese in Hawaii took such sanitary precautions that they were to day flourishing lar 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 be given up. No fewer than 320,000,000 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 the 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 for human lile unless great attention was paid to the matter of public health.