Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/181

Rh already experiencing the good effects of greater cleanliness, better food, and other reforms, introduced through the efforts of Howard and his coadjutors, the health of the prisoners was so much benefited and their lives so much prolonged that, as Mr. Beecher said "people might sigh for a location in some good salubrious prison." So great were the advances on all sides, that Sir Edwin Chadwick, the father of sanitation, so far as it can be defined (Steps to abolish Disease and to defer Death), became persuaded that there is a potential longevity in men of one hundred years, and that death at a period less than that should be counted premature. He was born in 1800 and died July 5, 1890; and if it is true, as many statisticians assert, that the period of human life has lengthened nine years since this century began, we can see that his belief was not altogether the dream of an enthusiast; for, in spite of the great advances made in the science of sanitation, and in the art of living so as to insure the highest health, he felt that only a beginning had been made, and that the coming century is to be the one in which the seeds planted in this are to attain their growth and bear their full fruitage.

In seeking the reasons for this advance, they all might be summed up in the one great sweeping fact of the mastery of man over the forces of Nature, through the grand scientific triumphs that began with the discovery of oxygen in 1774, and the control of steam and electricity obtained a little later. When we come to details, we find the first great universal factor is the better supplies of food, produced in greater quantities and with less labor than formerly through the intelligent application of agricultural chemistry, and the use of the marvelous myriads of agricultural machines, which stand for armies of laborers, who don't get tired and don't eat. When a Montana farmer can grow on one prize acre nine hundred and seventy-four bushels of good potatoes, the disciples of Malthus even can take heart, for Mr. Edward Atkinson has conclusively demonstrated that the food-producing areas of this country have as yet only been scratched over and worked at one corner. In Queen Elizabeth's time a statistical writer says that in London the deaths from starvation were not more than one in a thousand. At that rate the deaths in London now would be twelve hundred and fifty annually, while the fact is that the few deaths from that cause now are from suicidal mania and obstinate refusal to make application for the relief provided for the destitute. Linked with the foregoing is the rapid intercommunication of nations and the speedy transportation which has practically put an end to the great famines which formerly destroyed millions in Europe and Asia, and paved the way for "plagues" in reducing the vitality of the inhabitants. A wellto-do American laborer can to-day command a more