SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 183 



Take next, tlien, Sanitary Engineering. Science has, within a 

 few years, made wonderful strides in revealing the origin and propa- 

 gation of disease. The summaries recently made by President Bar- 

 nard, Prof. Dalton, and Prof. Chandler, give an admirable view of this 

 conquest. Mr. Baldwin Latham, in his recent book on " Sanitary En- 

 gineering," gives careful tables, showing the enormous reduction of 

 consumption, typhus, and typhoid, in several English towns by the 

 application of science to sewerage and water-supply. Dr. Beale, in 

 his work on "Disease-Germs," shows by statistics that a proper 

 application of engineering to sewerage would save 100,000 lives 

 yearly in Great Britain. More and more is this matter becoming im- 

 portant in this country. Hardly one in twenty of our towns has any 

 well-adjusted system of sewerage or water-supply, and in our rural 

 districts vast tracts are made wretched by miasma. 



Nor is this probably the worst. Vicious systems of heating and 

 ventilation are probably doing more to break down the physical con- 

 stitution of our people than all other causes combined. We see it 

 everywhere in sickly women, and puny children, and men but lialf 

 alive. The study of human physiology and the system of prevent- 

 ing and removing disease-germs should be combined, and young men 

 should have the opportunity to fit themselves for grappling with the 

 problems presented to sanitary engineers. 



Few among us dream of the monstrous waste now entailed upon 

 this country by imperfect instruction in Mining Engineering and 

 metallurgy. Take first the losses by fraud. A few years since our 

 people were asked to invest in a Nevada mine of great richness. Half- 

 educated mining geologists had certified to its value. But certain 

 capitalists sent a young man, carefully educated in a scientific school, 

 to examine and report. The young man on arriving found that the 

 mine looked well enough, but on applying more scientific tests he 

 found that an old worthless mine had been taken ; that rich sulphurets 

 had been brought and carefully placed in it at a cost of probably 

 $100,000. His report exploded the fraud, and nearly $1,000,000 was 

 saved — more than five times the sum that this scientific school received 

 from the Government of the United States. This same gentleman also 

 exploded a great diamond-mine fraud of the same sort. 



Take another case. Not long since a party of gentlemen deter- 

 mined to invest several hundred thousand dollars in working certain 

 iron-mines in this State. Just before their arrangements were finally 

 made, and much against the will of many of the proposed stock-hold- 

 ers, a young graduate of one of the scientific schools which received the 

 national endowment was sent to make an examination. He found that 

 the veins contained titanium, and that the entire investment, should it 

 be made, would be lost. His fee was $250 ; he prevented a loss of 

 over $400,000. 



You see now why Pennsylvania and Missouri and California and 



