Page:The Kingdom of Man - Ralph Vary Chamberlin 1938.djvu/23

Rh is a simple barbarian whose satisfaction in having said "Lafayette, we are here" makes him cease wanting his money back. To the Irishman, "an American is a transplanted son or Erin who feeds fat an ancient grudge by ruling the English with the advantage of not having to learn Irish." While to one large group of our citizens "an American is one who has fought and bled for his country and for whom his country consequently ought to be bled forevermore."

But without the protection and other advantages afforded by discoveries and developments providing biological control, modern civilization with use of most of its inventions would be impossible. The first growth and existence of large cities was possible only through the development of threshable wheat. The increased productivity due to improvements in our domesticated plants and animals together with the introduction of farm machinery is well known. Thus it is estimated that in the United States in 1787 it took all the surplus food produced by 19 farmers to feed one city person, while today 19 farm people produce enough food for 56 urban dwellers and 10 foreigners in addition. As a matter of fact, between 1910 and 1930 the farm worker's productivity increased more rapidly than that of the industrial worker. But the results in medicine have been the most striking in the field of biological control.

Medicine has probably influenced the course of modern history as much as or more than the Industrial Revolution. Our civilization has been able to advance and to hold its gain only through the protection afforded by medical and sanitary science. If deprived of that protection the civilization of every large city would retrograde 500 years and the city might be utterly destroyed. It certainly would be reduced within a few years to a fraction of the present size as epidemics swept the country, and the people would be sickly and short-lived. The population could persist only in sparse and well-separated communities, with the towns limited in size as were the old Athenian cities. Large sections of the world which are now prosperous would become uninhabitable as yellow fever, typhus, the plague and many diseases now almost forgotten returned to decimate the population. Speaking of conquering nations in the last 400 years President A. Lawrence Lowell says that "on the prow of the conquering ship first stood the priest, then the lawyer, then the merchant and finally the physician."

The results of medical and sanitary science are indicated by such facts as the following. In 1870 the death-rate in England and Wales was 22.9, and the infant death rate 160; in 1929 these had fallen to 13.4 and 74 respectively. Expectancy of life for men and women at birth 400 years ago was about 20; 100 years ago 35; today between 55 and 58. The death rate of infants in the slums of England is not one-third that in royal families of the Middle Ages. Most people then died in childhood; so religion stressed the good death, instead of the good life.