An eminent authority on the physiology of the vocal organs, Dr. Lennox
Browne, remarks (in _Voice, Song, and Speech_), that “respiratory
exercises, and subsequently lessons in reading, reciting, and singing,
are oftentimes of the greatest use in strengthening a weak chest; and,
indeed, it is not too much to say, _in arresting consumption_.” Another
excellent authority, Mr. A. B. Bach, points out (in his _Musical
Education and Vocal Culture_, which should be consulted by all who wish
to learn the art of Deep Breathing) that “very few vocalists die of
consumption,” owing to the fact that they properly exercise their lungs
and chests.
This brings us face to face with a moral question of enormous
importance, to which writers on ethics have by no means as yet given the
attention it loudly clamours for. Consumption, we read, “is a disease of
great frequency and severity, which, in the civilised nations of Europe,
produces from _one-sixth to one-tenth of the total mortality_, in
ordinary times.” Now if, as we have just seen, consumption can be
arrested and cured by proper exercise of the lungs and chest in pure
air, does it not follow that the neglect of such exercises makes certain
parties criminally responsible for the greater number of deaths from
consumption? It is “proved by careful inquiries that the workshops of
tailors, printers, and other businesses carried on in close,
ill-ventilated apartments, by large numbers of workmen, are, in a very
aggravated sense, _nurseries of consumption_. Cotton and linen factories
have also been shown, when ill-regulated, to be largely responsible for
the death of their inmates from this disease.”
Why should not the owners of factories who refuse to ventilate their
buildings be held responsible for the ill-health, the early decrepitude
and death of many of the workers, and the workers’ weakly, consumptive
children who die young? As England alone has over three hundred thousand
women engaged in cotton manufacture, the amount of ill-health, early
senility, ugliness, consumption, etc., bred by criminal neglect of
hygienic precautions, is appalling to the imagination. A case was
mentioned in the American papers a few years ago, where the windows in a
factory were _nailed fast_ to prevent the poor, suffocating girls from
opening them. And, strange to say, the owner of that factory was not
immediately lynched. Surely, if ever a monster deserved to be hanged to
the nearest tree, it was the man who ordered those windows to be nailed
down.
But factory owners are by no means the only persons who are thus
responsible for indirect manslaughter by foul-air poisoning. Thousands
of loving mothers and fathers blaspheme their Creator in attributing the
early death of their children to a “dispensation of Providence,” when
the plain truth, brutally expressed, is that they killed them with the
poisoned air, indigestible food, and insufficient exercise that brought
on the fatal consumption. To say that the disease was hereditary is only
to shift the hygienic crime on the shoulders of the grand-parents.
In human courts of justice ignorance of the law is not considered an
excuse for the commission of crime. If the same principle holds true in
some future world where human actions will be judged, what terrible
indictments will be brought against some parents for crimes committed
against the health and life of their children and grandchildren, for
neglecting to learn the laws of health, as laid down in physiological
and hygienic textbooks!
Inasmuch as Personal Beauty is the flower and symbol of perfect Health,
it might be shown, by following out this argument, that _ugliness is a
sin, and man’s first duty the cultivation of Beauty_.