Page:Fifty years hence, or, What may be in 1943 - a prophecy supposed to be based on scientific deductions by an improved graphical method (IA fiftyyearshenceo00grim).pdf/53

 Medical science and art no longer work blindly; no longer act hap-hazard.

The average life of man (largely, let it be said, due to the efforts of the life insurance companies in enforcing sanitary improvements and in fostering medical and surgical research), has been about doubled. Surgical operations which fifty years before were deemed chimerical or impossible are now, thanks to the improved anaesthetics and antiseptics at command, performed most frequently; so that laparotomy, the Caesarian operation, bone-grafting, removal of diseased portions of the brain and extirpation of the kidneys, and their replacement by those of the sheep or calf, are common and successful.

Acute disease is treated almost exclusively by heat, cold and electricity. The subcutaneous injections discovered, or rather foreshadowed, by Brown-Sequard, have been brought to such pitch of perfection that by their use the vigor of forty is maintained until eighty or even ninety years, The noble work of Koch in subjugating pulmonary consumption has rendered that dread disease no longer contagious, while brighter light upon the mode of living, and improvements in