The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1868-09-05
Fifty Years Hence.


A recent article in the London Spectator
contains some curious speculations upon the
question-whether the next fifty years can
by possibility witness as marvellous a
change, political, social and material, as the
ast fifty have wrought. The great agenc es
of steam, the telegraph, the factory and the
press, have all been born, or at least reached
manhood, within the last half century. Can
it be that we are on the threshold of dis
coveries equally new and equally tremen-
dous in their effects upon mankind! Take,
for example, single department of human
knowledge, the healing art. Is the day far
distant when physicians, in the words of a
great Edinburgh surgeon, "shall be familiar
with the chemistry of most diseases; when
they shall know the exact organic poisons
that produce them, with all their exact an
tidotes and eliminatories; when they shall
look upon the cure Of, some maladies as
simply a series of chemical problems and
formu ulm; when they shall melt down all
calculii, necrosed bones, &C., chemically,
and not remove them by surgical opera
tions; when the bleeding in amputations
and other wounds shall be stemmed, not by
septic ligatures or stupid needles, but by
the simple application of bemostatic gases
or washes; when the few wounds then re-
quired in surgery shall all be swiftly and
Immediately healed by the first intention;
when medical men shall be able to stay the
ravages of tuberole, blot out fevers and in
Examinations, avert and melt down morbid
growths, cure cancer, destroy all morbi6c
organic germs and fermeuts, annul the
deadly influences of malaria and conta-
gions, and by these and various other
means markedly lengthen out the average
duration Of human life; when our hygienic
condition and laws shall have been changed
by State legislation, so as to forbid all COM
municable diseases from being communica-
ted, and remove all causes of sickness that
are removable; when the rapidly increasing
length of human life shall begin to fulfil
that ancient prophecy, the child shall die
an hundred years DID, when there shall
have been achieved, too, advances in other
walks Of life, far beyond our present state
of progress; when houses shall be built and
many other kinds of work performed by
machinery, and not by human hands; when
the crops in these islands shall be increased
FIVE or ten.fold, and abundance of human
food be provided for our increased popula-
tion by our fields being irrigated by that
waste organic refuse of our towns which
we now recklessly run off into our rivers and
seas; when man shall have invented means
of calling down rain at will; when he shall
have gained cheaper and better motive
powers than steam; when he shall travel
from continent to continent by submarine
railways or by flying and ballooning through
the air." Though these sentences may
read like the dreams Of a poet and enthuai-
ast, they contain nothing beyond the fair
range of scientific conjecture. Again, we
hardly know, we can scarcely guess, where
the application of powers already used may
end. Suppose it true, as many men of
mark in science believe, that the next great
step may be in sea. going steamers, that In
ternationsl communication may be accele-
rated as internal communication has been,
that we may yet see New York brought
within two days journey of Liverpool.
The probability is that in ten years every
social condition now existing in Europe
would have ceased TO exist, that the mil
lions who toll for others, and on whose toll
modern society is built would choose to toll
for themselves, would precipitate them
selves in rush, to which ell the movements
of mankind have been trifes, upon the New
World. Suppose the population of Britain
and Germany reduced to len millions each
change less in magnitude than that which
has occurred in many countries-and those
ten millions only retained by advantages as
great as the New World can offer, what
would oil the changes of the past half CEN