394 PHYSIOLOGY AND HEALTH. 



934. Thus we see that the most favored people fall short 

 of the full period of their earthly existence, and the poor in 

 some places dooiot average one fourth of it. If we add to 

 this abbreviation of life the deductions made by the lighter 

 and temporary indispositions, and the severer and protracted 

 sicknesses, and deduct the whole from the allotted period of 

 threescore and ten years, it is manifest that a large part of 

 mankind receive but a small share of the amount of active 

 and productive life that seems intended for them. 



935. This great abridgement of life is not caused by im- 

 perfection of the Creator's work. There is nothing in the 

 healthy organization that indicates the necessity of disease, 

 debility, or early death. Nature has not made the mistake 

 of giving man a set of organs, all of which may continue in 

 successful operation seventy years, with the exception of the 

 lungs, or stomach, or brain, which will wear out, or become 

 disordered and fail, in half that time., These are not the 

 mistakes of nature ; for, with the exception of hereditary dis- 

 eases and imperfections which some parent has engrafted on 

 his own constitution and transmitted to his children, most 

 men are born with perfect and equal organization, with 

 equal power of action and endurance in all the parts of 

 their frames. 



936. Few die, at the end of their full period, from ex- 

 haustion of all their physical powers by proper and regular 

 action through the whole period. Most persons die, before 

 the natural term is completed, from the failure or disease of 

 some of the organs rather than from general decay in old 

 age. In every 1600 who died in Massachusetts during the 

 22 years preceding 1864, 314 died of diseases of the lungs, 

 137 of diseases of the digestive organs, 78 of diseases of 

 the brain, and only 54 of old age. 



937. Here is a very small portion but little more than 

 one twentieth that died because the machinery of life 

 was worn out. The great majority died from the disease 

 or failure of some one of the organs to sustain itself and 

 perform its part in the work of life, if these organs had 



