Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/719

 PUNISHMENT TO FIT THE CRIME 705

smallpox, since the discovery, by experiment, of vaccination. In experimenting on murderers, in no case would their suffering be greater than that of the millions who die of disease ; indeed, the suffering of the individual murderer would be less, because of the advantages of relief such an experiment station could offer. Moreover, in a large number of cases, anaesthetics would be used, and in all such instances the pain would be greatly lessened and often insignificant. Anything that offers relief to tortured millions dare not be dismissed on the ground of cruelty, because it may cause pain to a few hundred murderers.

No human being can live for any length of time in a tempera- ture ten degrees above the normal temperature of the body, unless the conditions permit of rapid evaporation. We know the sufferings caused by the heat of the sun when the tempera- ture of the atmosphere does not even reach the normal blood heat of man. Pass the normal temperature only a few degrees, and in a comparatively short time death frees us from the tor- tures of being burned alive. The result is the same whether it be the child writhing in the agonies of scarlet fever, the adult in the delirium of typhoid fever, or the tortures of the victim of that scourge whose very name strikes terror to the hearts of millions, yellow fever all these the victims of diseases which, after slowly poisoning them, are burning them alive. Every year fevers cause more than a hundred thousand deaths in our country victims of ignorance.

In the battle of Gettysburg the number of men killed on both sides was 5,600 an awful slaughter of human lives at which the whole world shuddered. In our own land, after suffering weeks and years of pain, the single disease of consumption is killing every month nearly twice as many people as lost their lives at Gettysburg. A slaughter equal to twenty Gettysburgs a year in our own fair land, and we stand by in silence, helpless, idle, lest we be cruel ! Consumption, tuberculosis, a germ disease, claims a hundred thousand souls and more (one for every seven or eight persons who die, one for every five revolutions of the second hand of your watch) as an annual sacrifice in our country, the helpless victims wasting away day by day, hoping against hope,