I40 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



move or lessen some of the causes of excessive disease. There does not 

 seem to be any sign that the desire of modern man to build himself 

 cities and to live in them is weakening. So far ahead as any one can 

 see, cities will continue to crowd to the edge of the stream of human life 

 in 'a blacker, ineessanter line.' Unknown forces vdll doubtless arise 

 in the future which will ameliorate the conditions of city life in the 

 way that the trolley has already done, but there will always exist cer- 

 tain problems peculiarly urban and created by what some curiously term 

 the artificial conditions of city life. It should be the task of a well- 

 conceived, far-seeing art of municipal hygiene to deal vrith the sanitary 

 aspect of these problems. It does not by any means follow because 

 some of the conditions of city life at present are distinctly inimical to 

 human welfare that they should always remain so. And it should be 

 recognized, furthermore, that the city possesses, within and because 

 of its own structure, certain hygienic advantages, of which to be sure 

 it does not always avail itself, but which in the long run will count 

 heavily in its favor. There are already indications that these factors 

 are becoming operative. The approximation of the urban to the rural 

 death rate shown by the last census to have occurred in several states 

 is not in all probability to be accounted for by a sudden shifting of the 

 age and sex distribution of the population, but marks a real improve- 

 ment in the sanitary conditions surrounding city life. 



Excess of Urban Over Rural Death Rate. 



Registration Slate. 1890. 1900. 



Connecticut 3.9 .1 



Massachusetts 2.7 .8 



New Hampshire 1.0 1.3 



New Jersey 7.9 3.3 



New York 9.3 4.0 



Rhode Island 1.1 .4 



Vermont 3.0 .7 



Since it is not true that urban life necessarily and inherently entails a 

 higher death rate than rural life, it would seem time to dismiss the 

 gloomy forebodings sometimes expressed that the cities are destined to 

 become 'the graveyard of the human race,' that an inevitable physical 

 degeneration is bound to attend life in the great centers of population, 

 and that density of population is in itself a deplorable accompaniment 

 of modem industrial development. Eather do the signs point to an 

 increasing consciousness on the part of the city dweller of the hygienic 

 advantages bestowed upon him by his position, to a deliberate and intel- 

 ligent attempt on his part to master the forces that make for the 

 excessive prevalence of disease in crowded centers, and especially to a 

 growing realization of the necessity for a careful study and apprecia- 

 tion of the hygienic possibilities of his environment. 



