OUR GRANDFATHERS DIED TOO YOUNG. 167 



eries. Yet they hq,ve already taken from theology what was for- 

 merly its strongest province, sweeping away from this vast field 

 of human effort that belief in miracles which for more than 

 twenty centuries has been the main stumbling-block in the path 

 of- medicine ; and, in doing this, they have cleared higher paths, 

 not only for science, but for religion.* 







OUR GRANDFATHERS DIED TOO YOUNG. 



By Mrs. H. M. PLUNKETT. 



THE chronic pessimist, who is convinced that all true wisdom 

 died long ago with some old moldering ancestor, and who 

 believes that the world and all its arrangements are daily waxing 

 worse and worse, is frankly warned to skip this article, for he will 

 find nothing in it to sustain his cheerless and pestilent views, nor 

 to comfort his grumbling and disagreeable soul. 



All students of vital statistics are now thoroughly agreed as 

 to the actual lengthening of the average period of human life, 

 and facts will be adduced to show on what their faith is grounded ; 

 and an attempt will be made to point out the many and encour- 

 aging factors that have helped to achieve the result. 



In discussing so lofty a topic as the steady lengthening of 

 human life in all civilized countries in these later times prop- 

 erly rated as the highest earthly interest it is almost humili- 

 ating to learn that the earliest revelation of the cheerful fact 

 came through a thrill in the pocket-nerve. 



In England, at the close of the first quarter of this century, it 

 began to be perceived that the Government was losing money in 

 paying its annuities calculated on the same basis as those that 



* For rescue of medical education from the clutch of theology, especially in France, 

 see Rambaud, La Civilisation Contemporaine en France, pp. 682, C83. For miraculous 

 cures wrought by imagination, see Tuke, Influence of Mind on Body, vol. ii. For the oppo- 

 sition to scientific study of hypnotism, see Hypnotismus und Wunder : ein Vortrag, mit 

 Weiterungen, von Max Steigenberger, Domprediger, Augsburg, 1888, reviewed in Science, 

 February 15, 1889, p. 127. For a recent statement regarding the development of studies in 

 hypnotism, see Liegois, De la Suggestion et de Somnambulisme dans leurs Rapports avec 

 la Jurisprudence, Paris, 1889, chap. ii. As to the miraculous in general, for perhaps the 

 most remarkable of all discussions on the subject, see Conyers Middleton, D. D., A Free 

 Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian 

 Church, London, 1749. For probably the most complete and judicially fair discussion of 

 it, see Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. i, chap, iii ; also his Rationalism in Europe, 

 vol. i, chaps, i and ii ; and for, perhaps, the boldest and most suggestive of recent state- 

 ments regarding it, see Max Miiller, Physical Religion, being the Gifford Lectures before 

 the University of Glasgow for 1890, London, 1891, lect. xiv. See also, for very cogent 

 statements and arguments, Matthew Arnold's Literature and Dogma, especially chap, v, 

 and, for a recent utterance of great clearness and force, Prof. Osier's address before the 

 Johns Hopkins University, given in Science for March 27, 1891. 



