610 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



be feared by the public at large. Typhus fever, once so deadly, 

 is now rarely beard of. Curious is it to find tbat some of the dis- 

 eases which in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in 

 every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought 

 of little account, and for the cure of which, therefore, people rely 

 to their cost on quackery instead of medical science. 



This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the 

 United States has been coincident with a marked change in the 

 attitude of the American pulpit as regards the theory of disease. 

 In this country, as in others, down to a period within living 

 memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions were con- 

 stantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as "results of national 

 sin," or as "inscrutable Providences." That view has mainly 

 passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of 

 the country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading 

 useful ideas as to the prevention of disease ; the religious press 

 has been especially faithful in this respect, carrying to every 

 household more just ideas of sanitary precautions and hygienic 

 living. 



In summing up the whole subject, we see in this field another 

 of those great triumphs of scientific modes of thought which are 

 gradually doing so much to evolve in the world a religion which 

 shall be more and more worthy of the goodness of God and of the 

 destiny of man.* 



Me. Grttm Gezimailo has brought four specimens of the wild horse (Equtis 

 Prejevahky) home to St. Petersburg from central Asia. He has found that a part 

 of the oasis of Turfan is below the level of the sea, and believes that it represents 

 the bottom of a former lake of considerable extent. 



* On the improvement in sanitation in London and elsewhere in the north of Europe, 

 see the editorial and Report of the Conference on Sanitation at Brighton, given in the Lon- 

 don Times of August 27, 1888. For the best authorities on the general subject in England, 

 see Sir John Simon on English Sanitary Institutions, 1890 ; also his published Health Re- 

 ports for 1887, cited in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1891. See also Parkes's Hygiene, 

 passim. For the great increase of the mean length of life in France under better hygienic 

 conditions, see Rambaud, La Civilisation contemporaine en France, p. 682. For the ap- 

 proach to depopulation at Memphis, under the cesspool system in 1878, see Parkes, Hygi- 

 ene. American appendix, p. 397. For the facts brought out in the investigation of the de- 

 partments of the city of New York, by the Committee of the State Senate, see New York 

 Senate documents for 1865. For decrease of death-rate in New York city under the new 

 Board of Health, beginning in 1866, and especially among children, see Buck, Hygiene and 

 Popular Health, New York, 1879, vol. ii, p. 575 ; and for wise remarks on religious du- 

 ties during pestilence, see ibid., vol. ii, p. 579. For a contrast between the old and 

 new ideas regarding pestilences, see Charles Kingsley in Fraser's Magazine, Iviii, 134 ; 

 also the sermon of Dr. Burns in 1875 at the Cathedral of Glasgow, before the Social 

 Science Congress. For a particularly bright and valuable statement of the triumphs of 

 modern sanitation, see Mrs. Plunkett's article in The Popular Science MOiNTHLY for 

 June, 1891 



