Parenting & Family Quote by Edward Burnett Tylor

A Victorian scientist watches a community cough and refuses the cheap thrill of diagnosis. Tylor’s sentence performs a kind of methodological self-control: he registers a vivid, almost domestic detail - children coughing - then immediately undercuts the reader’s impulse to turn anecdote into verdict. The pivot is the phrase “though people look strong and healthy,” which exposes how easy it is to let appearances launder risk. It’s an early recognition of what we’d now call the limits of “eyeballing” public health.

The real action is in the restraint: “in the absence of proper statistics one cannot undertake to say.” Tylor isn’t just being careful; he’s staking a claim about what counts as knowledge. This is the 19th century, when anthropology and the social sciences are trying to separate themselves from travel writing’s confident generalizations. His diction - “undertake,” “district,” “proper statistics” - carries bureaucratic chill, a deliberate contrast to the intimate image of children coughing. That tension is the subtext: human suffering is visible, but legitimacy in scientific discourse requires quantified backing.

There’s also a quiet indictment embedded in the conditional. If you need “proper statistics” to declare a place unhealthy, then the absence of counting becomes part of the hazard. The quote frames data not as a luxury but as infrastructure; without it, even conscientious observers are trapped between suspicion and silence.