Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/451

 unfavorable influences shall not be too intense, or suffered to act upon them for any great length of time. On the other hand, those defectively organized can not overstep the bounds of the most watchful prudence without incurring suffering. Only by the most minute and accurate knowledge of hygiene, and unswerving attention to its requirements, are they enabled to avoid pain, disease, and an untimely end.

The genius of our civilization in its physiological aspect is to make spendthrifts of us all of our vital riches. It includes no such aim as race improvement. True, some youthful culture of the head and heart is supposed to reach after that object. But it does not. It looks only to immediate success in social distinctions, or to winning in competitive struggles, not to the more remote objects of our improvement as a race. Indeed, the instances in which physical degeneration, by the prevailing injudicious and highly prized head-culture, is not thereby begun, are altogether exceptional. Compare the highly educated son with his father, and a perceptible diminution in the grade of constitutional stamina is nearly always manifest. Continue the process for a generation or two, and a progressive deterioration will ensue until there are only sickly boys to grow up into invalided manhood.

Very few ever think of, and yet fewer ever seek after, the accumulation of vital riches. Only when brought to suffering by poverty of this kind is the mind aroused to any interest in the subject. Prior to the inception of disease, a thoughtless squandering of vital reserve is what our social practices systematically encourage; and when as a consequence corporeal structure is inharmoniously developed, when debility, disease, and untimely death ensue, these are not regarded as the evidences of a fatal flaw in the existing system of civilization, but as matters of prevision which alone concern Providence and the doctors. The constitutional vigor, thus so blindly spent, renders frequent demands upon the highest resources of the healing art urgently necessary. And it must be confessed that in prolonging the life of defective blood there are displayed a skill and care never before equaled. During the more primitive phases of civilization, those of weak and defective blood were more liable to be swept into an untimely grave than they are to-day. Now, all such are skillfully nursed up to the fertile period, to the multiplication and perpetuation of their kind. The profound study, the active sympathy, and systematic charity bestowed upon the wrecks of our race for their cure and preservation, when compared with the prevailing indifference as to the means of preventing the steady increase of such helpless unfortunates, is far from flattering to our foresight in economy and beneficent work. Vast infirmaries, hospitals, and asylums dot the land to shelter and cure the ever-increasing ratio who become pitifully and hopelessly bankrupt in vital condition; yet there is no money, no labor, light, or system brought to bear to hinder this downward career, but very much of all—thoughtlessly we will allow—to aid in its increase and perpetuation.