ARTIFICIAL PROLONGATION OF LIFE 



343 



rate for persons of thirty-five years has only diminished from 

 11-9 to 9-9 ; while that for persons of forty-five years of age has 

 remained stationary — 15'8 and 15-6. The rate for persons of 

 fifty-five years of age and upwards shows positive increase. 



Annual Death-rates at Different Groups of Ages (1870-1900). 

 Deaths per 1,000 Living Females. 



What do all these figures teach us ? In the first place, they 

 teach us that modern sanitary improvements, modern hygiene, 

 modem care for the child, have had a great efiect in reducing 

 the rate of child mortality ; in the second place, they teach us 

 that, on the other hand, the number of persons in the best years 

 of manhood — from thirty-five years and upwards — who are 

 robust and healthy is less than it formerly was. Obviously, if 

 in 1870, among 1,000 living male persons of forty -five years of 

 age, 19-6 on an average died ; and if, thirty years later, among 

 the same number of persons the rate of mortality was 20-8, it 

 is evident that the average standard of life among persons of 

 forty-five years of age has diminished. And this diminution 

 must be taken in connection with the augmentation in the 

 standard of Ufe among persons of less than twenty years of age. 

 In other words, -the category of normality, as Professor Lexis 

 would call it, consisting of those persons who attain sixty years 

 and upwards, has seen its standard of life diminish at the expense 

 of the category of weaklings who, in the ordinary course of events, 

 would die in the early years of life. More weak individuals have 

 their lives artificially prolonged through care and improved 

 hygienic conditions ; and these weak individuals, thus permitted 



