James Cantlie, Degeneration amongst Londoners

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Degeneration
Amongst
Londoners
A Lecture delivered at the Parkes Museum of Hygiene, January 27, 1885.

Preface

THIS Lecture, which seems to have attracted so much public attention in the newspapers, has been printed in order to show what were the true statements made.
J. C.
14, Suffolk Street,
Pall Mall, W.

Degeneration Amongst Londoners.

[Part I]

To all who live in London the title of this lecture is calculated to excite surprise and suspicion: surprise, that in this, the most healthy of all large towns, as judged from the death-rate returns, there should be even a question of gradual degeneration; suspicion, lest false grounds, mistaken premises, and too narrow observations have landed me in an erroneous belief.

An apology seems at first sight [p. 8] necessary, but I will reserve giving it until the end of the lecture, when, if it is proved I am in error, I shall be ready to grant one.

I.The first knotty point to be settled is-What is, or where is London from a hygienic standpoint?

It is not limited by bars or gates, nor by high walls or entrenchments, but by the distance any given point of it is removed from the nearest point where really fresh air is to be obtained. In this street, for instance, it is many a decade since really fresh country air has been wafted along its length by even a gale of wind.

The next thing to occur to one [p. 9] is, What is fresh air, or what is there in fresh air to make so great a difference between the air we obtain in town and that which circulates in the country ? Most agree that it is ozone, a gas, a modification of oxygen, to which unsearchable vital powers are ascribed: it is found in the open country, at sea-in fact everywhere, where there is not too great an aggregation of human beings to abstract or decompose it. This gas gives the peculiar odour present in the neighbourhood of an electric machine; it is present in the air in quantity during a thunderstorm and a fall of snow: it is borne in greater [p. 10] quantity on the south-west wind than on any other, probably because that comes, in this country, from off the sea, and the sea seems to be its haven or birthplace, for it is greater in quantity there than elsewhere. If ozone is the health-giving spark, certain it is, none of it is to be found in London. The air has been tested over and over again for this gas, and I had it examined on January 18th, 1885, once more. The day was very dull, the wind N.E., and blowing at the rate of only about one and a half miles an hour. The various places from whence I obtained information on that day were: near Brownswood Park, in the N.E. of [p. 11] London; near Maida Vale, in the N.W.; at Wandsworth, at Barnes, at Chiswick, and in Bushy Park, in the S.W.; and in Hyde Park. With the exception of a faint, very faint indication of ozone in the N.E. there was no evidence of ozone being present anywhere else. It was from the N.E. quarter the wind was blowing, hence at Bushy Park the air had travelled all over London, and consequently had little likelihood of containing ozone after that. Practically there was no ozone beyond a small semicircle of the N.E. quarter.

But supposing a gale had been blowing, and it had been summertime when the air had been tested, [p. 12] it is unlikely that ozone or fresh air would have travelled further than one mile nearer the centre of London, or, say, as far as the Angel at Islington. So it is with other districts when the wind blows from different quarters: if from the south, it has to pass over Croydon, and but little ozone then finds its way to London. From whatever quarter the air is blowing, the outer circlet of, say, half-a mile of human beings, absorbs the fresh air, and not only so, but adds various pollutions to it, so that the air breathed within a given area, centred around, for instance Charing Cross, or the Bank, has not had fresh air supplied to it for, say, 50 or 100 years. [p. 13]

Hence we might define London as a district where there is no ozone.

II. Did you ever get sunburnt in London?

I shall answer the question for you, and say NO. The natural appearance of the face in London is pale; when it is otherwise it is red; not brown or tanned, but red. An omnibus-driver does not get brown, he gets red ; and you can see the cause of the redness to be dilated vessels in the skin of his face.

Why does one not get sunburnt in London? Is it absence of light, or is it the absence of fresh air-the ozone we have been speaking of?

Light, as we know, develops pigment; [p. 14] and it will do so in human beings under certain conditions. When, however, one is sickening for an illness-say typhoid fever-it is impossible to get sunburnt for some weeks previously even at the sea-side. There are varieties of consumptive people who never get sunburnt in the country or at sea. It is only at a certain turning-point in convalescence that a person can get sunburnt. Beneath a quarter-deck in the tropics, where it is supposed the reflection from the sea is the cause of the sunburning (just as if the reflection of a mirror could sunburn), you can tell the healthy traveller from the blanched and pale invalid returning home suffering [p. 15] from Asiatic diarrhoea or dysentery by the effect which the sun has upon them.

A convalescent on board ship, who is kept in his cabin with only the stream of light (and it may be from the shaded side) which enters through the window, gets sunburnt. Hence, it is not altogether light; there must be something else present in the air: and to avoid creating a new entity, we shall term it ozone still, and believe that ozone must be present in the air before healthy people can be sunburnt, but that no amount of exposure to even ozonised air will "tan" a person suffering from the conditions mentioned above. Hence [p. 16] I would limit London to the region where sunburning is unknown.

III. Thirdly, I would define London to be a region where at any time beneficial exercise is impossible.

No exercise can be beneficial in "the highest sense" which is undertaken in polluted air. With increased exertion, increased respiratory processes are necessary, and greater chemical changes are requisite, necessitating for their hygienic completion a greater supply of fresh air. But as this is absent in the air of London, exercise taken in London cannot do that amount of good it does were it taken in fresh air. Far be [p. 17] it from me to condemn exercise in London, and to say, Never walk when you can ride. I would say rather, Walk whenever you can; mount a horse if you have one, and take what air and exercise you can get even in the area mentioned. The evils which accrue from want of exercise, greatly outbalance the total want of exercise in an atmosphere that may not be quite fresh. Still, there is no doubt that were a gymnast (i.e., a man requiring an increased amount of air) trained in such an atmosphere as that of the underground railway, he would die sooner, than, if living in such an atmosphere he moved about in an ordinary way. Hence I land myself in a [p. 18] dilemma: am I to condemn exercise in London because it is bad, or am I to say the good gained from exercise, say walking, outbalances the evils of sedentary life ? Whichever way we settle it, it practically settles itself. Few people walk far in towns; few of you walked here to this lecture. Why do not people walk in town as in the country? Because they get so quickly tired; there is no freshness in the air, even in the parks, and what is theoretically wrong is practically borne out, viz., that people in London walk as little as possible simply because they do not feel inclined to; but if they did walk more, the good that would come of it would be doubtful. [p. 19]

Hence, then, I will return to my enunciation, viz., that no exercise can be beneficial in the highest sense which is undertaken in polluted air.

This text is based on the following book(s):
Degeneration amongst Londoners. Cantlie, James, Sir. London. Field and Tuer. 1885.

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