ple,[1] with
what result I have here tried to point out, chiefly because it is an
illustration in the most concentrated form of causes which are at work
elsewhere throughout the land.

[Footnote 1: I asked two citizens of this uneasy town--on the same
day--what was their business. Both replied tranquilly that they were
speculators!]

The facts I have given establish the disproportionate increase in one
great city of those diseases which are largely produced by the strain on
the nervous system resulting from the toils and competitions of a
community growing rapidly and stimulated to its utmost capacity.
Probably the same rule would be found to apply to other large towns, but
I have not had time to study the statistics of any of them fully; and,
for reasons already given, Chicago may be taken as a typical
illustration.

It were interesting to-day to question the later statistics of this
great business-centre; to see if the answers would weaken or reinforce
the conclusions drawn in 1871. I have seen it anew of late with its
population of 700,000 souls. It is a place to-day to excite wonder, and
pity, and fear. All the tides of its life move with bustling swiftness.
Nowhere else are the streets more full, and nowhere else are the faces
so expressive of preoccupation, of anxiety, of excitement. It is making
money fast and accumulating a physiological debt of which that bitter
creditor, the future, will one day demand payment.

If I have made myself understood, we are now prepared to apply some of
our knowledge to the solution of certain awkward questions which force
themselves daily upon the attention of every thoughtful and observant
physician, and have thus opened a way to the discussion of the causes
which, as I believe, are deeply affecting the mental and physical health
of working Americans. Some of these are due to the climatic conditions
under which all work must be done in this country, some are out-growths
of our modes of labor, and some go back to social habitudes and
defective methods of early educational training.

In studying this subject, it will not answer to look only at the causes
of sickness and weakness which affect the male sex. If the mothers of a
people are sickly and weak, the sad inheritance falls upon their
offspring, and this is why I must deal first, however briefly, with the
health of our girls, because it is here, as the doctor well knows, that
the trouble begins. Ask any physician of your