112 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
COMMERCIAL VALUE OF SANITARY WORK. 
In a recent lecture in New Haven on the value of sanitary work, Professor 
Brewer, of Yale College, reviewed at great length the causes and effects of 
plagues and pestilences that did so much to darken the history of Europe during 
the Dark Ages. He then traced briefly the origin of sanitary science and its 
benefits, as shown in a largely diminished death rate. And after pointing out 
the four great obstacles to sanitation—ignorance, filthy habits, selfishness, and 
indifference—he proceeded to show how sickness, especially avoidable sickness, 
tends to impoverish communities as well as individuals. In this connection he 
said : i me 
‘Every student of history and of political economy notices the wonderfully 
rapid accumulation of wealth and capital in-modern times compared with what it 
has been in previous ages. ‘The material wealth and working capital of the civ- 
ilized world has more than trebled in less than a lifetime. The accumulation of 
wealth and property (and it is this which represents the aggregate savings from 
labor) during the last few years more than equals all that had been saved in all 
the thousands of years that had gone before, and that, too, while there has been 
a more general enjoyment of the comforts of life and a:much greater indulgence 
in its luxuries. The nature and sources of this rapid growth have been the sub- 
ject of much discussion by the statesmen and political economists. The causes 
generally assigned are the invention of modern machinery, the use of steam as a 
motor, the growth of modern means of transportation by sea and land, the ap. 
plication of the natural sciences to the arts and industries, the spread of popular 
education, the diminution of wars, and the production of the precious metals. 
There is no doubt that each and all of these have had their influence; but there 
is one still greater cause which is too often overlooked, simply because it is not 
so conspicuous. The greatest of all causes is to be found in the better average 
health of civilized countries, and the longer average term of life which is now se- 
cured to workingmen. 
‘Tt was not merely war, nor because they did not have steam, nor did not 
know about greenbacks, that kept the masses in poverty all through the Middle 
Ages—it was disease, and the death that came from disease that kept the nations 
poor. The history of the Middle Ages is a sad succession of plagues, of cities 
devastated, of States impoverished, of laborers swept away in millions, by suc- 
cessive waves of pestilence that followed each other as often as cities grew popu- 
lous. Between the common sickness which was ever present and the pestilences 
which swept off their millions at a swoop, the average period available for actual 
labor in man was perhaps not more than half what it is now. Meanwhile, it 
took just as long to rear children to a working age as now, and sickness was just 
as expensive; so, between the diminished power of production, the waste by 
sickness, the panics and checks to commerce caused by plagues which were 
raging somewhere all the time, it is no wonder that wealthy people were compar- 
