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Summary of the transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Summary of the transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia Author:College of Physicians of Philadelphia Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ed to renovate the weakened body, as well as merely to remove the cravings of hunger. The landlord who looks to having his houses always occupied by good payi... more »ng tenants, will not be negligent either of the health or the morals of those persons. He will not speculate on the powers of endurance of human beings, when deprived of fresh air, by residence in damp, close, and badly ventilated rooms, and who are compelled to inhale an impure and vitiated air, the product of their own respiration, and the exhalations of the accumulated filth of cess-pools and yards choked up by garbage. The inmates of such habitations are necessarily less fitted for labour, and active employment of every kind; lose more time by sickness, and are carried off in larger proportion by death, than those more favourably circumstanced. Their nervous system is weakened, and disturbed in the functions of the senses and of the brain ; and even if intemperance should not add its baleful influence to their distress, they are more open, in consequence, to the causes of moral disorders and temptations to evil doing. Men thus wearied and worn, depressed in mind and body, and deprived of all the genial excitement of fresh air and light, and all the objects which might remind them of nature under her more pleasing aspects, soon become careless of themselves, indifferent to the wants of their families, and regardless of the obligations contracted with employer, or landlord, or the administrators of the laws, with whom they may be brought into contact. They are unfitted for prolonged and regular labour. They are bad workmen, bad tenants, and unsafe neighbours. Individual health is, therefore, if we believe these views to be correct, an affair of individual and domestic economy, as public health is of public or polit...« less