236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



crowded streets in Liverpool die before they arrive at tlie age of 

 one year, whereas, under ordinary or healthy surroundings, a half 

 would not die within the first five years of life. Why is this so? 

 Simply because the surroundings are so detrimental to healthy 

 development. Again, consumption is fatal to sixty thousand 

 people in England alone, annually, and this is a disease born of 

 hereditary taint, due to unhealthy surroundings and other health- 

 depressing influences. In fact, as I have before said, most of the 

 diseases which destroy in early life are due to causes which ought 

 not to exist, and in time, as sanitary science advances, will not 

 exif \ We know that already the improved sanitation of the 

 country is bearing fruit, that the average life is lengthening year 

 by year, that many diseases that carried off tens of thousands in 

 the days of our grandfathers are almost harmless now. 



Smallpox has lost its terrors. The causes of such fatal diseases 

 as typhoid, diphtheria, etc., are well established, and doubtless, in 

 time, these plagues will be rooted out. 



Last year we escaped an epidemic that might have carried off 

 hundreds of thousands, and why ? Because we know its ways, 

 and have not allowed it to spread in the country. The highest 

 duty of the state is to guard the health of the people, and public 

 opinion of recent years is waking up to this fact. An epidemic is 

 no respecter of persons ; it may have its origin in the hovel of a 

 pauper, but its baneful influence reaches the lordly palace of the 

 noble, and it ingulfs all classes in its deadly embrace. The aris- 

 tocrat and the plebeian are socially separated by a very wide gulf, 

 but as far as epidemic disease goes they are conterminous. Social 

 distinctions are no barrier when the angel of death is following in 

 the wake of those plagues that destroy life before its natural ter- 

 mination in old age and general decay. 



To sum up, if old age is to be put off to its furthest limits, the 

 individual who wishes to attain it should live carefully up to 

 middle age, taking plenty of exercise, and so adapting the diet 

 that corpulency, gout, and other diseases due to taking too much 

 and improper food without doing sufficient physical work to con- 

 sume it, can not be developed. Mental and physical occupation 

 are an absolute necessity, if the constitution is to be kept in 

 healthy working order, and this applies equally to both sexes. 

 The human economy will rust out before it will wear out, and 

 there are more killed by idleness than by hard work. Human 

 energy must have some outlet, and if that outlet is not work of 

 some kind, habits are acquired that are not always conducive to 

 long life. 



Old age is the proper termination of human life, and, as Cicero 

 says : " The happiest ending is when, with intellect unimpaired, 

 and the other senses uninjured, the same Nature which put to- 



