Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/22

 capable of destroying them all. Indeed, it seems likely that medicine, the least progressive of the sciences to-day, will find in oxygen the great propulsive force of its forward movement. In considerably less than a hundred years hence such makeshifts as drugging, and the fighting of one disease by the instalment in the organism of another, will certainly have gone by the board. Antisepsis and Asepsis (the latter almost infinitely the greatest invention in the history of therapeutics) will have pushed their way from surgery into medicine, There are numerous diseases which can be not merely cured, but ultimately abolished when we have once discovered how to use oxygen adequately. The readjustment of the conditions of life determined by the removal from the civilised world of the greater number of diseases, and perhaps of all diseases except those arising out of wilful misconduct (as improper diet) and even by the elimination of most of the evils of hurry and overwork (for what are medically and chemically known as fatigue products can almost certainly be eliminated from the system by the proper use, yet to be discovered, of oxygen) must inevitably have an enormous influence not merely upon the physical life of man, but also, and even more, upon his mental constitution. The rate of progress will thus in yet another way be vastly accelerated.