336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



believed to be the cause of the remarkable decrease in the mortality 

 from consumption. 



The diseases of the circulatory and eliminative organs, of which 

 arterio-sclerosis may be cited as the type, are the destructive element 

 which bear off our brain workers and educated men many years before 

 their time. Does any one doubt that these men might live as long, as 

 happily and usefully as Carnaro did, if they will ascertain, as he did, 

 the physiological regime upon which their lives should be governed 

 and act accordingly? 



See what Japan, in the science of domestic hygiene certainly the 

 most civilized nation on the globe, has accomplished in the few short 

 years between its war with China and its war with Eussia. In the 

 former war three Japanese soldiers died from disease to one who died 

 from wounds. This has been considered the average mortality rate of 

 modern warfare, and so strong is prejudice and so well entrenched is 

 error that this ratio has been looked upon as the inevitable consequence 

 of war, whereas in the Eusso-Japanese war, by the exercise of simple 

 and perfectly feasible methods, the ratio of the mortality from sickness 

 to that from wounds in the Japanese army assumed the proportion of 

 one to four and one half, a difference from the accepted ratio of almost 

 800 per cent. No one would have believed this possible had it not been 

 amply demonstrated. Suppose that an army of United States troops 

 was opposed to a Japanese army. It would not be necessary for the 

 latter to strike a blow or to fire a gun ; if they could only hold our army 

 in check for six months disease would do the rest. Do I say disease? 

 I mean the ignorance and officialism which prevents the systematic 

 adoption of the study of the individual soldier and the reasonable pre- 

 cautions which have borne such splendid results in Japan. And shall 

 we decline to undertake similar studies in civil life because this has not 

 been done heretofore? Did not Baron Takaki's epoch-making study 

 of the ration in the Japanese navy stamp out beri beri in that branch 

 of the service and enable Admiral Togo to annihilate the splendid 

 Eussian fleet? 



We live as though we fully believed that man, of all living animals, 

 is exempt from natural laws or can live superior to them. Eace horses, 

 bullocks, poult^, are reared under the strictest rules of diet and 

 hygiene. Our children are left to ignorant nurses, or the divided 

 counsels of improperly instructed medical men. We pass laws to pre- 

 vent the children of the poor from working nights or in unwholesome 

 surroundings, and yet we allow an overcrowded a»d ill-advised system 

 of public instruction to seriously and sometimes fatally injure our own 

 children. 



There is a glaring hiatus in our educational system. The only 

 remedy is in the proper physical education of children and the in- 



