480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



report some years ago to the Massachusetts Board of Health, that 

 the average longevity, which at Geneva, in the time of the Refor- 

 mation, was 21"21 years, between 1814 and 1833 had increased to 

 40*68, and that as many people would live to seventy as reached 

 forty, three hundred years ago. The records of annuities on life 

 show the same fact, proving, strange as it may appear, that within 

 the last three centuries the average period of human existence has 

 nearly doubled.* 



While those cognizant of such facts realize the benefits result- 

 ing from the applications of science, we sometimes hear it urged 

 that such things are effected by the work of practical men, and 

 that the theorists are useless. A more absurd and misleading 

 idea was never expressed in words, and yet it is taken up and 

 believed by people who never stop to question its truthfulness. 

 In this respect it stands on a par with many an adage that passes 

 current to-day. What, for instance, could be more fallacious than 

 that " Contentment is better than riches," " Murder will always 

 out," or " Brave men are never cruel," when history furnishes the 

 records of Marius, Sulla, Haynau, and Napoleon, men whose 

 courage was never doubted, but who were guilty of acts of cruelty 

 that would disgrace any age ? Absurd and untruthful as are these 

 sayings, they are no more so than the statement that any class of 

 men studying science can be set down as theorists who are of no 

 benefit to humanity. 



This can be made more apparent by the consideration of a few 

 incidents in the lives of great men. For instance, John Hunter 

 spent a large portion of his time in acquiring knowledge of ana- 

 tomical facts which were regarded as useless by his so-called 

 practical associates. He was a man who believed that no knowl- 

 edge was unworthy of attention, and consequently dug deep into 

 the foundations of his favorite science. By such studies he learned 

 how the arteries changed, and that, when the main trunk was ob- 

 structed, the collateral branches enlarged sufficiently to carry on 

 the circulation. At first this knowledge did not admit of any 

 practical application. Finally, a patient came to him with an 

 aneurism upon a branch artery. Hunter was thus given and 

 embraced the opportunity of demonstrating the practicalness of 

 his apparently visionary study, inasmuch as he at once boldly 

 tied the main artery, which, up to that time, no surgeon had ever 

 dared to do. The result was that the patient's life was saved, 

 and a new and valuable operation introduced into the science 

 of surgery. 



Linnaeus, more than a century ago, was spending his time in 

 the visionary pursuit of bug-hunting, when the Swedish Govern- 



* Quoted from Draper's Conflict between Religion and Science. 



