HH62/1/INVERN/5

Transcription

Inverness-shire County Council.

Annual Report of Medical Officer
FOR YEAR 1891.

INTRODUCTORY.

The largest county in Scotland, Inverness, possesses
also one other equally marked characteristic of its
own. Stretching right across the island from sea
to sea, embracing every variety of scenery, almost
every variety of climate to be found in the British
Isles, containing alike the highest mountain of Britain and its
most remarkable valley - the Great Glen of Albyn - through
which the ocean at one time rolled, cutting Scotland in two - it
is a unique combination of contrasts. Here is land of rare
fertility, there bleak moors whose wildness is unsurpassed. The
pine forests of Strathspey, the placid waters of many lakes, "the
spectral peaks of Skye," the busy streets of the Highland Capital,
the solitudes of Affaric, the crags of far St Kilda, all have their
place in the picture - all go to the making of the geographical
unit known as Inverness. And as with the land, so too with
the people. Norsemen of varied blood, Picts to whose fathers
Columba preached under the protection of Brude, Scots from the
west and south, and many a Saxon from the low country - all
these have their place in the population, sometimes still capable
of distinction, sometimes crossed and blended beyond all possi-
bility of recognition; and their dispositions, their circumstances,
and their callings are as diverse as their stock. What holds
of the fisher folk and farmers of the East Coast may be
utterly untrue of the crofters of the West. What is urgently
true of the mainland may have no bearing on the fifty
inhabited islands. Of all this your Medical Officer has
become only too well aware in the discharge of his official
duties during the past twelve months, and he adverts to it now
not so much with the object of drawing attention to the difficulties
he has had to face as with the view of emphasising the need for
caution in dealing with such a County. Each district has its own
special needs - if, indeed, each separate township might not profit-
ably be treated apart. There is no place for generalities or for a