THE CHEMIST IN CONSERVATION 293 



our gas-works are totally inadequate to the demand. These are but 

 typical wastes. 



Our improvidence is shown in other fields. Our average mortality is 

 high, exceptionally so among infants. Take an example near home. In 

 the month of July last 245 infants under one year of age died in the 

 state of Iowa, 109 of cholera infantum. Last August there were in the 

 same state 1,785 deaths : of these 472 (more than one fourth) were 

 under 5 years of age; of these 350 (about one fifth of the total) were 

 under one year. Of the infants 291 died of cholera infantum, a disease 

 difficult to cure but nevertheless recognized by sanitarians as entirely 

 preventable. Illness is frequent in the whole country. According to the 

 Eeport of the Committee of One Hundred on National Vitality, three 

 million people in the United States are at all times seriously ill, half a 

 million of tuberculosis. Drugs and stimulants are used excessively; 

 food, improper in quantity, or in the kind and proportions of its nutri- 

 ents, is often the rule, thus lowering human vitality and decreasing 

 efficiency. 



The food and water that we eat and drink, the atmosphere that we 

 breathe, are deteriorating. The mere mention of food adulterations will 

 suffice. Our industrial waste products are poured into our streams ; our 

 sewage and garbage, for the most part, directly or indirectly, share the 

 same fate. The quality of our inland waters is therefore steadily de- 

 teriorating. "We can depend less and less upon our rivers, springs and 

 shallow wells for domestic and city water supplies. Even the industries 

 where a pure or an impure water represents the difference between a 

 high grade and an unsatisfactory product, are seriously hampered by 

 being limited to a badly polluted water for steam making and other 

 purposes. Many of our fresh-water fishes have become locally extermi- 

 nated, particularly in the eastern manufacturing sections, and many a 

 smiling river, and pleasant stream, have become converted into mere 

 open sewers which carry away, more or less efficiently, unidentifiable 

 contaminations . 



The pollution of the atmosphere has increased with civilization. 

 Not only are the gases from our heating and power plants blown into 

 the air with half-consumed matters in the shape of soot and cinders, 

 but from chemical industries acid gases and other noxious products 

 are allowed to escape and to drift whither they will. The sulphur di- 

 oxide from the smelters destroys vegetation, including forests, for 

 miles around. When these are gone denudation commences and rapidly 

 progresses until the region appears a veritable desert. Arsenious oxide 

 is usually found in such gases, and not only aids in the destruction of 

 the vegetable world, but, over great areas, leaves the marks of acute or 

 chronic poisoning upon the animals that graze within the district and 

 upon human beings that breathe the air. In comparison with these 



