oubt modern medical hygiene,
both public and private, has made so much progress in towns that there
may be, at a certain age, proportionally more living children than in
the country; but the country children are of stronger constitution and
more healthy in every way.

I had the opportunity of confirming this opinion while I was
superintendent of a lunatic asylum for many years. I found it was
impossible to recruit from the town a good staff of nurses of either
sex.

The inhabitant of towns, it is true, learns his work more quickly, but
he lacks patience, perseverance and character, and soon shows himself
wanting in the accomplishment of his physical and moral duties. The
countryman, on the contrary, is at first slow and clumsy, but soon
becomes more capable and careful, and more amenable to education. This
shows that, on the average, the hereditary dispositions of the
country-bred child are better than those of the town-bred child. The
latter develops more rapidly and more completely his natural
dispositions, owing to social intercourse, while the country-bred
child, although he appears at first sight less intelligent, is really
better endowed on the average than the town child. The superficial
observer is easily deceived, but country life accumulates more reserve
force in the organism than urban life.

Sexual excesses in the country are more conformable to nature. Apart
from marriage, we meet with concubinage, infidelity, and sometimes
prostitution, but these excesses are never widely spread in small
places where every one knows each other. An extensive study of the
alcohol question has shown me that hereditary degenerations and sexual
evils in the country are principally due to alcoholism and its
blastophthoria (vide Chapter I). But when factories, mining
industries, etc., create unhealthy conditions in the country, the evil
influences of urban life are implanted there, often in a still higher
degree.

The society of large towns is made up of many different circles, who
have little or no relations with each other, do not know each other,
and seldom concern themselves about each other. The individual is only
known in his own circle. This circumstance favors the increase of vice
and depravity. In addition to this, the insanitary dwellings, the life
of excitement and innumerable pleasures, all tend to produce a
restless and unnatural existence. The best conditions of existence for
man are contact with nature, air a