374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



lovely and most holy thing that has been given to man. So may we 

 clear the fair name of science of the false charge of materialism that is 

 so often brought against it by those who do not know and judge science 

 purely by mechanical inventions. 



Next let us consider the applications of scientific discovery and see 

 if we cherish aright the gifts of the fairy godmother, for her gifts are 

 dangerous if wrongly used. Consider, if this be doubted, the enormous 

 advantages given by mechanical and chemical contrivances in producing 

 the material comforts necessary to civilized human existence, and then 

 turn your eyes to the reeking slums of our great cities. It is clear that 

 natural science can not go on successfully alone, it must take sociology 

 with it if our world is to be a better world to live in because of the gifts 

 brought by scientific discovery. 



Nor is the ideal and the outlook different in the least from that 

 given above for pure research, when we come to consider its applica- 

 tions, the same high spirit must prevail in all our endeavors, or we 

 shall defeat our own ends and miserably fail. Selfishness here, as every- 

 where, must recoil on the culprit, who only deadens his own soul. 

 Health is needed not to grow wealthy or to prolong to greater length a 

 "lingering death" as Plato puts it, but to fill life with happiness, and 

 beckon the bold and adventurous forward to higher things. Here we 

 must copy Nature's own plan and take care of the race as a whole in- 

 stead of spending our energies upon single individuals or favored 

 classes. Nor need any one fear that any individual or any particular 

 class in the community is going to suffer from the adoption of the true 

 scientific attitude towards disease. The penalty taken by nature on the 

 more comfortable classes who have hitherto enjoyed the greater share 

 in government for allowing the existence of poverty, disease and slum- 

 dom, is to utilize this negelected area as a culture-ground for diseases, 

 which invade the classes above. Nature is still at work creating, still 

 conducting evolution at the highest level, and disease is at present the 

 tool with which she is working. So long as those poverty-stricken slums 

 are allowed to remain, just so long is she grimly prepared to take her 

 toll of death and suffering from those who ought to know how to lead 

 on and do it not. The disease and the crime below are to the social com- 

 munity what pain is to the individual, and just as the special senses be- 

 come more highly organized and sensitive as the nervous system be- 

 comes more highly developed, so as the civilization of the community 

 intensifies does the public conscience awaken to forms of mischief and 

 crime in one generation that were unsuspected in a previous one. So 

 social evils become intolerable and finally are removed. How then are 

 we employing our knowledge as to the causation of disease to the public 

 problem of its removal or abatement ? 



In regard to the physical environment much has been done during 



