Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/195

 Take next, then,. Science has, within a few years, made wonderful strides in revealing the origin and propagation of disease. The summaries recently made by President Barnard, Prof. Dalton, and Prof. Chandler, give an admirable view of this conquest. Mr. Baldwin Latham, in his recent book on "Sanitary Engineering," gives careful tables, showing the enormous reduction of consumption, typhus, and typhoid, in several English towns by the application of science to sewerage and water-supply. Dr. Beale, in his work on "Disease-Germs," shows by statistics that a proper application of engineering to sewerage would save 100,000 lives yearly in Great Britain. More and more is this matter becoming important in this country. Hardly one in twenty of our towns has any well-adjusted system of sewerage or water-supply, and in our rural districts vast tracts are made wretched by miasma.

Nor is this probably the worst. Vicious systems of heating and ventilation are probably doing more to break down the physical constitution of our people than all other causes combined. We see it everywhere in sickly women, and puny children, and men but half alive. The study of human physiology and the system of preventing and removing disease-germs should be combined, and young men should have the opportunity to fit themselves for grappling with the problems presented to sanitary engineers.

Few among us dream of the monstrous waste now entailed upon this country by imperfect instruction in and metallurgy. Take first the losses by fraud. A few years since our people were asked to invest in a Nevada mine of great richness. Half-educated mining geologists had certified to its value. But certain capitalists sent a young man, carefully educated in a scientific school, to examine and report. The young man on arriving found that the mine looked well enough, but on applying more scientific tests he found that an old worthless mine had been taken; that rich sulphurets had been brought and carefully placed in it at a cost of probably $100,000. His report exploded the fraud, and nearly $1,000,000 was saved—more than five times the sum that this scientific school received from the Government of the United States. This same gentleman also exploded a great diamond-mine fraud of the same sort.

Take another case. Not long since a party of gentlemen determined to invest several hundred thousand dollars in working certain iron-mines in this State. Just before their arrangements were finally made, and much against the will of many of the proposed stock-holders, a young graduate of one of the scientific schools which received the national endowment was sent to make an examination. He found that the veins contained titanium, and that the entire investment, should it be made, would be lost. His fee was $250; he prevented a loss of over $400,000.

You see now why Pennsylvania and Missouri and California and