262 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION 



of deriving far greater gratifications from food (consistently 

 with health) than the lower animals generally appear to be 

 capable of. He has also given us reason to act as a guiding 

 and controlling power over this and other propensities, so that 

 they may be prevented from becoming causes of malady. 

 We can see that excess is injurious, and are thus prompted to 

 moderation. We can see that all the things which we feel 

 inclined to take are not healthful, and are thus exhorted to 

 avoid what are pernicious. We can also see that a cleanly 

 skin and a constant supply of pure air are necessary to the 

 proper performance of some of the most important of the 

 organic functions, and thus are stimulated to frequent ablu- 

 tion, and to a right ventilation of our parlours and sleeping 

 apartments. And so on with the other causes of disease. 

 Reason may not operate very powerfully to these purposes in 

 an early state of society, and prodigious evils may therefore 

 have been endured from diseases in past ages ; but these are 

 not necessarily to be endured always. As civilization advances, 

 reason acquires a greater ascendancy ; the causes of the evils 

 are seen and avoided ; and disease shrinks into a comparatively 

 narrow compass. The experience of our own country places 

 this in a striking light. In the middle ages, when large 

 towns had no police regulations, society was at frequent in- 

 tervals scourged by pestilence. The third part of the people 

 of Europe are said to have been carried off by one epidemic. 

 Even in London the annual mortality has greatly sunk within 

 a century. The improvement in human life, which has taken 

 place since the construction of the Northampton tables by 

 Dr. Price, is equally remarkable. Modern tables still show 

 a prodigious mortality among the young in all civilized 

 countries evidently a result of some prevalent error in the 

 usual modes of rearing them. But to remedy this evil there 

 is the sagacity of the human mind, and the desire to adopt 

 any reformed plans which may be shown to be necessary. 

 By a change in the management of an orphan institution 

 in London, during the last fifty years, an immense reduc- 

 tion in the mortality took place. We may of course hope 



