Health

industry, after that of agriculture the most important in the country, the one The manufacture of textiles was transferred to the sources of power, towns grew up without plan, houses were built without supervision or regulation, great masses ofpeople gathered together without regard to health, decency or comfort, and soil, air and were polluted without restriction. The rural-urban population movement was rapid and continuous; the population of England and Wales increased by 47 per cent between i Boi and I83I and the rural labourer, who numbered two to every one town workman 1790, only numbered one to every two of the latter in The resultant however, caused a reaction; the humanitarian movement among other attacked the conditions that caused to the and which led to one in every thirty persons in the however, was the more potent spur; disease is no respecter ofpersons and as the well-to-do were endangered by the conditions of the poor, the repeated visitations of cholera and other diseases were valuable auxiliaries on the side of reform..