By a manuscript of the
fourteenth century, moreover, it is shown that the rate of mortality
in Paris was then one in sixteen,--one person dying annually to every
sixteen of the inhabitants. It is now one in thirty-two,--a gain of a
hundred per cent, in five hundred years. In England the progress
has been far more rapid. The rate of mortality in 1690 was one in
thirty-three; in 1780 it was one in forty; and it stands now at one in
sixty,--the healthiest condition in Europe,--while in half-barbarous
Russia the rate of mortality is one in twenty-seven. It would be easy to
multiply these statistics to any extent; but they all point one way, and
no medical statistician now pretends to oppose the dictum of Hufeland,
that "a certain degree of culture is physically necessary for man, and
promotes duration of life."
The simple result is, that the civilized man is physically superior to
the barbarian. There is now no evidence that there exists in any part of
the world a savage race who, taken as a whole, surpass or even equal the
Anglo-Saxon type in average physical condition; as there is also
none among whom the President elect of the United States and the
Commander-in-chief of his armies would not be regarded as remarkably
tall men, and Dr.
Pages:
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213