ABSTRACT
The world has tried many masters, soldier and priest, emperor and pope, tyrant and mob, king and parliament, church and guild, lord of the manor, and merchant of the city state. The nation shares the burden of the services of the town out of the rates, and exerts indirect control in order to ensure a certain degree of uniform efficiency. For instance, its standard of public health must, by statute, be both efficient and progressive. In the modern period, our medical problem, like our social environment, has become vastly more complex than in the Middle Ages. The Industrial Revolution itself brought an immense growth of trade with a corresponding increase of wealth. The chapter presents the aspect of English social life which marked the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and which only has been treated by the scientific method. The healthy life of the body depends upon the ordered sequence of a series of harmonious processes and functions.
