ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the actual operations of modern collective humanism in the sphere of preventive medicine. The Industrial Revolution in England was little short of a tragedy in respect of child-life. Hardship, cruelty, disease, and early death placed their gross and indelible mark on the English child in a way and to a degree unknown to-day. The data collected furnished an overwhelming mass of evidence which presented a convincing case both of the physical needs of necessitous and underfed school-children and of the administrative means necessary for the introduction of a system of medical inspection and supervision. The four illustrations—the prevention of infant mortality, the care of the school-child, the health insurance system, and the reduction of maternal mortality—demonstrate in practical form the application by official authorities to the community of an organised form of modern collective humanism representative of preventive medicine which is new in England.
