Victory over Disease. the phonograph preserves the exact record for future generations. The successes which have been achieved in the departments of medicine and of sanitary science are Doctorand almost equally wonderful. Before the discovery of Sanitary vaccination, the horrible disease of small-pox was a Reformer. scourge which constantly ravaged all classes of the Doctor. community. It spared neither the monarch in his Note 6. Note 7. Note 8. 6 palace nor the peasant in his hut. Louis the Fifteenth of France died of it. So did Queen Mary the Second of England. Every third or fourth person in this country was disfigured by its unsightly scars. This pest has been almost exterminated by vaccination, and its attacks upon vaccinated persons are comparatively harmless. Another great discovery, that of chloroform and other anaesthetics, has mitigated the sufferings of mankind to an incalculable degree. So late as the Indian Mutiny, limbs were amputated while the patients were fully conscious of their agonies. Now a merciful oblivion is thrown over surgical operations by the action of these potent and beneficent drugs. In the same sphere as the Sanitary doctor works the sanitary reformer. Cities are drained, Reformer. slums are destroyed, open spaces are created or pre Victory Political Note 9. served, streets are cleansed, houses are ventilated. The ravages of that class of diseases, such as typhoid fever, cholera and the plague, which depends upon dirty and insanitary conditions, are checked and reduced to a minimum. No less valuable than these are the Victories won over the forces of civil tyranny and class oppression. In our country, these have been Victories of Peace. The old absolute monarchies of Europe have, it is true, with scarcely an exception, been obliged to admit their subjects to a voice in the government under which they live. Some measure of freedom has been generally established. In most countries this has been effected by violence and revolution: in ours, by constitutional methods and reform. In this country today, every man has the right of free speech; almost every man has a vote; no man is debarred from the full privileges of citizenship on account of his religious opinions; the forces of crime and disorder Note 10. are kept in check by an efficient system of police; Note 11. the administration of equal justice to all is ensured by the watchful criticism of an absolutely free Press. There was nothing like this at the beginning of this century; and save for a few riotous outbursts at critical moments, all this progress has been achieved without loss of blood. Immor The social reformer has perhaps the widest sphere Victory of all. Material progress would be of but little value over Ignorif it were not accompanied by moral improvement. ance and The social reformer has done a great work. Education ality. has been made compulsory, universal and gratuitous, Social and is no longer the privilege of the few. Workhouses, Reformer. factories, lunatic asylums and prisons have been re- Note 12. formed, and the old scandals of the Marshalsea and Note 13. the Fleet have been abolished. Drunkenness is con- Note 14. demned by public opinion. So is duelling. Literature has been cleansed from the coarseness which pervades and disfigures the works of our earlier writers. Among the lower orders, although much remains still to be attempted, in cleanliness, and decency, in habits and morals, in manners and speech, in refinement and taste, in all that is comprised in the word Civilisation, great and general improvement has been diffused. But Note 15. Victories. Such are the Victories of Peace. The triumphs of Durability war are of short duration. Too often they do but of these sow the seeds of terrible retaliation in the future. the Victories of Peace do not rankle; and they endure to the end. D I. 2. 3. 4. NOTES Notice the repetition of the preposition. It gives emphasis and distinction to each word which it precedes. The "destructive force" is, of course, lightning. The application of electricity to the many purposes which it now serves is of very recent date. Many of its uses, including the megaphone, the phonograph, various adaptations of the electric light, the kinetoscope, which supplies the well-known "living pictures," as well as improvements in the telephone, which was invented by Graham Bell in 1876, are due to the ingenuity of the American inventor, Edison, who was born so lately as 1847. The honour of the invention of the telegraph is a subject of dispute between the Old World and the New. It lies between Wheatstone, an Englishman, in 1836; and Morse, an American, in 1837. The first Atlantic Cable was laid between Valentia in Ireland and Newfoundland in 1858, and a second by the Great Eastern in 1866. Many other cables have been laid since. If the 'Varsity Boat Race is just finished at twelve o'clock, noon, by Greenwich time, the result is known in New York at five minutes past seven, A.M., that is, five hours before it takes place. Roughly speaking, the stationary steam-engine was invented by James Watt at the end of the eighteenth century, and the locomotive by George Stephenson about 1829. These are the two great names in the history of steam, but of course there are hundreds of others to whom innumerable minor inventions are due which have contributed to the perfection with which we are now familiar. Strictly speaking, Watt and Stephenson themselves were improvers, not discoverers; but their improvements were so original and so radical that they are fairly entitled to the honours commonly assigned to them. The first voyage of a steamship from New York to Liverpool was made by the Savannah in twenty-six days 5. 6. 7. 8. in 1819; and regular steam communication with America began in 1838. From the daguerreotype, invented by a Frenchman called Daguerre in 1839, photography has progressed to the Kodak, the "living picture," and innumerable processes, such as photogravure, founded on photography. Vaccination was ascertained to be a preventive of smallpox by Jenner in 1798. It was made compulsory in England in 1853, and Vaccination Officers were appointed in 1871 to enforce the Act. A small body of ungrateful and ignorant people have, of late years, organised a stubborn resistance to the compulsory preservation of themselves and the community from a loathsome disease. The Particular for the General. It is more graphic than saying merely "It spared neither high nor low." See Part III., § 2. Chloroform was first used as an anaesthetic by Sir James Simpson in 1847. 9. By the Reform Bill of 1832, the franchise, or right to vote, was given to the shopkeepers; by those of 1867 and 1884, it was extended to the working-man. IO. II. The Test Act was repealed in 1828. Catholic Emancipation was granted in 1829. No man is any longer excluded, as he was when the century opened, from Parliament, from the franchise, from the Civil Service, the Universities or the Army, because he is a Roman Catholic or a Dissenter or a Jew. The modern police system was introduced by Sir Robert Peel in 1829. 12. National education was organised by Mr Forster in 1870. It has been made free of cost within the last few years. 13. 14. The abuses connected with these institutions, ill-usage of paupers, confinement of sane persons in private asylums, gaol-fever and many other horrors, none of them separated from us by many years, of which the record still exists in the novels of Reade and Dickens, appear almost incredible to a generation which has grown up in these far better days. The Particular for the General. See Note 7. I might have said simply "imprisonment for debt." The Mar 15. shalsea and the Fleet were the two chief debtors' prisons. See Dickens' "Pickwick," Chap. XL. to XLII., and the early chapters of "Little Dorrit." See also Sir Walter Besant's "Chaplain of the Fleet." Social reform would, by itself, easily form a subject for an entire Essay. The mitigation of the Criminal Code, the abolition of slavery, the Factory Act, the regulation of colliery labour, the discontinuance of transportation and many other topics might be added to those already alluded to. As this Essay is expressly designed to show how a large subject may be treated in an orderly manner within a strictly limited compass, exclusion of much otherwise suitable matter is inevitable. WORDS AND PHRASES anaesthetics = drugs that destroy sensation. COMMENT This Essay is an example of breaking up a subject into its divisions, and treating each division in its separate paragraph. It involves a general knowledge of the social and political history of the last three-quarters of the Nineteenth Century. Notice that we do not employ all the facts at our command, but only such instances as are at once striking and readily apprehended. For instance, the anti-septic treatment, a discovery no less beneficial than vaccination or chloroform, is omitted as being not sufficiently familiar to most of those who are likely to use this book. The selection of instances is a matter of judgment acting upon knowledge. We review the facts we know under each heading; and we pick out those which serve our immediate purpose, having strict regard to our limits of space and time. This Essay covers a great deal of ground; and therefore each division of the subject must be touched lightly and not overloaded. |