ially from indigestion, is
aggravated beyond endurance by the general conditions of his life, the
uncertainty of his existence, his dependence upon all possible accidents
and chances, and his inability to do anything towards gaining an assured
position. His enfeebled frame, weakened by bad air and bad food,
violently demands some external stimulus; his social need can be
gratified only in the public-house, he has absolutely no other place
where he can meet his friends. How can he be expected to resist the
temptation? It is morally and physically inevitable that, under such
circumstances, a very large number of working-men should fall into
intemperance. And apart from the chiefly physical influences which drive
the working-man into drunkenness, there is the example of the great mass,
the neglected education, the impossibility of protecting the young from
temptation, in many cases the direct influence of intemperate parents,
who give their own children liquor, the certainty of forgetting for an
hour or two the wretchedness and burden of life, and a hundred other
circumstances so mighty that the workers can, in truth, hardly be blamed
for yielding to such overwhelming pressure. Drunkenness has here ceased
to be a vice, for which the vicious can be held responsible; it becomes a
phenomenon, the necessary, inevitable effect of certain conditions upon
an object possessed of no volition in relation to those conditions. They
who have degraded the working-man to a mere object have the
responsibility to bear. But as inevitably as a great number of working-
men fall a prey to drink, just so inevitably does it manifest its ruinous
influence upon the body and mind of its victims. All the tendencies to
disease arising from the conditions of life of the workers are promoted
by it, it stimulates in the highest degree the development of lung and
digestive troubles, the rise and spread of typhus epidemics.

Another source of physical mischief to the working-class lies in the
impossibility of employing skilled physicians in cases of illness. It is
true that a number of charitable institutions strive to supply this want,
that the infirmary in Manchester, for instance, receives or gives advice
and medicine to 2,200 patients annually. But what is that in a city in
which, according to Gaskell's calculation, {104} three-fourths of the
population need medical aid every year? English doctors charge high
fees, and working-men are not in