Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/182

170 variety of nutritious food than could the lord of the middle ages.

Next, the invention of machinery has so increased the supplies of clothing, and increased intercommunication has so aided in its distribution, that the protection and comfort of mankind have been immeasurably enhanced, while a better knowledge of the hygiene of clothing has prolonged many a life. The single item of waterproof garments and rubber shoes has saved so many lives that the philanthropist ought to rejoice that just as the cry began to go up, "The Brazilian forests are becoming exhausted," Stanley opened up boundless stores of rubber in Africa.

The next great and widely operating cause of lengthened life has been the extensive application of drainage-works, undertaken primarily to give a higher agricultural value to land, but incidentally causing an abatement in fever and ague and all other types of malarial disease, and also greatly lessening the cases of consumption—as damp soil is now recognized as the great predisposing cause of lung diseases. In Birmingham, England, where the drainage was good, the deaths were one in forty, in spite of many insalubrious manufactories; while in Liverpool, where an undrained soil counteracted many sanitary advantages, they were one in thirty-one. By the drainage of the Bay Ridge district of Long Island, under an intelligent and judicious commission, not only were malarious swamps changed into fertile corn-fields, but the druggists testified that they sold one quarter only of the quinine used before, and the resident physicians that there was a cessation of chills and fever and all types of intermittent and remittent fever. It should be noted, in passing, that all the landowners joined; one obstinate obstructionist can nullify the good intentions of a multitude of right-minded men.

We now begin to come upon the widely operating reforms consequent on the investigations and recommendations of sanitarians; the first and greatest of which is the supply to multitudes of communities of pure water; sometimes tapping an uncontaminated supply by a pipe, and sometimes going below the element of danger by an artesian well or other method of securing protected water and thereby saving thousands from attacks of typhoid and fatal diarrhœal diseases. It is beginning to be learned that constantly drinking impure water creates a lowered vitality as much as breathing a vitiated air, and that either one helps to supply ready-made victims for any of the epidemic diseases.

The next great sanitary reform has been a knowledge of the true principles of ventilation. The need of pure air—air that has not previously been breathed by another person is by no means as well understood as could be wished, but enlightenment is surely making its way, and ancient evils are vanishing before it. A