59 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



veterinary surgeon, were frequently combined in one person in the 

 early part of the present century. 



What a contrast appears to-day ! Popular medicine and hygiene 

 are becoming everywhere the fashion. Public sentiment and action 

 are aroused in regard to all manner of sanitary and curative measures. 

 When men of distinction are ill, the conditions of their pulse, temper- 

 ature, and respirations are telegraphed all over the civilized world, to 

 be read at the breakfast-table in the morning newspaper. Their medi- 

 cines and their doses are minutely described ; diagrams of the course 

 of a bullet, or startling pictures of microscopic sections of tumors, or 

 views of cholera-germs, appear in our daily papers ; and in the most 

 popular family magazines we read articles upon the " anatomy of the 

 brain," or " how to trap a soil-pipe." We have a mother's magazine 

 devoted to improvements in baby-feeding and the scientific develop- 

 ment of the infant mind. The book-stores abound in popular works 

 upon every medical topic, from the subject of singers' sore throats to 

 the treatment of sea-sickness, consumption, or the opium-habit. A 

 great deal of all this, especially the newspaper medicine, is fostered 

 by a maudlin craving for every detail of that which is exciting or 

 horrible. It is to cater to the same kind of feeling that newspapers 

 describe how many lumps of sugar a condemned murderer took in his 

 coffee on the morning of his hanging. The germ-theory, too, has 

 given a great impetus to popular medicine. 



The germ appeals to the average mind : it is something tangible ; 

 it may be hunted down, captured, colored, and looked at through a 

 microscope, and then, in all its varieties, it can be held directly respon- 

 sible for so much damage. There is scarcely a farmer in the country 

 who has not read of the germ-theory. A cow-boy in Arizona was shot 

 dead in the saddle recently by a comrade for the insult implied by 

 calling him a " d d microbe " ! 



Still, a great deal of this popular medical talk and instruction is 

 the outcome of an earnest desire to learn to alleviate the growing 

 evils of heredity and environment, especially in overcrowded cities. 

 The importance of a universal knowledge of, and attention to, the 

 laws of physiology and hygiene is becoming more and more appreci- 

 ated,* and the elements of these subjects are taught in the public and 

 private schools. The mental training to be acquired through the ob- 

 servation of biological and physiological facts is recognized as being 

 of the greatest importance, and laboratory courses of instruction in 

 these studies are already introduced in many of our colleges and uni- 

 versities side by side with the classics. There is a wide-spread popu- 

 lar interest in the thorough training of nurses for the sick, and in such 

 practical and beneficial work as the establishment of diet-kitchens for 

 the sick poor, and sanitary reforms of all kinds. We have "Sanitary 

 Protective Leagues " and " Sanitary Aid Societies," composed princi- 



* See Spencer on "Education," chap, i, p. 76, "What Knowledge is most worth." 



