x.] VICTORIES OF SCIENCE. 255 



ignorant man, which can be counteracted by increasing 

 manifold by scientific means his powers of producing 

 food.' She has taught men, during the last few years, 

 to foresee and elude the most destructive storms ; and 

 there is no reason for doubting, and many reasons for 

 hoping, that she will gradually teach men to elude 

 other terrific forces of nature, too powerful and too 

 seemingly capricious for them to conquer. She has 

 discovered innumerable remedies and alleviations for 

 pains and disease. She has thrown such light on the 

 causes of epidemics, that we are able to say now that 

 the presence of cholera and probably of all zymotic 

 diseases in any place, is usually a sin and a shame, for 

 which the owners and authorities of that place ought to 

 be punishable by law, as destroyers of their fellow-men; 

 while for the weak, for those who, in the barbarous and 

 semi-barbarous state and out of that last we are only 

 just emerging how much has she done ; an earnest of 

 much more which she will do ? She has delivered the 

 insane I may say by the scientific insight of one man, 

 more worthy of titles and pensions than nine-tenths of 

 those who earn them I mean the great and good 

 Pinel from hopeless misery and torture into com- 

 parative peace and comfort, and at least the possibility 

 of cure. For children, she has done much, or rather 

 might do, would parents read and perpend such books 

 as Andrew Combe's and those of other writers on 

 physical education. We should not then see the 

 children, even of the rich, done to death piecemeal by 

 improper food, improper clothes, neglect of ventilation 

 and the commonest measures for preserving health. 

 We should not see their intellects stunted by Pro- 

 crustean attempts to teach them all the same accom- 



