Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/137

 influence in correcting some of the evils which over-civilisation at present entails. But the very progress of the art of healing will no doubt have the effect of perpetuating in a manner the existence of illness. Every forward step in medicine serves to save alive some weakling that in a less advanced civilisation would die; and these survivors, possibly propagating their species, will have weak descendants, on whom whatever possibility of disease continues to exist will certainly fasten. The discovery of means by which we can make a weak "constitution" into a strong one is perhaps the least likely of medical innovations. It would be altogether contrary to the general spirit of the times anticipated to expect that we shall have steeled our hearts to the destruction of feeble lives as dangerous to the race. We are much more likely to go on finding better means to perpetuate them: and this means that there will always be work for the doctor, though the infective fevers will have been banished from the earth. Medicine, therefore, will still aspire. But apart from what are called occupation-diseases, caused by certain manufacturing processes (of which the more deadly, as phosphorus match-making, lead-glazing of earthenware and the manufacture of enamelled iron will before long certainly be abolished), the elaborate machinery and rapid travel of the new age must needs exact a certain toll of death and