The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1882-10-14
THE MIRACLE OF LIFE.


mark, when small boy has just escaped
drowning, or small girl has narrowly fail
ed to fall out of a window, sit is a won
der that children every live to grow up. "
Still more wonderful is it, in the light of
the revelations Of sanitary science, that
anybody manages u live from one day to
another. Indeed, it is little short of a
miracle that any one except an occasional
savage is alive at the present moment.
len or fifteen years ago it was disc0v-
ed that nearly all our food was adulterat-
ed, and that the rest OF it was normally
| unfit to eat. We were told that our
bread was made of the most worthless
parts Of flour and was plentifully poison
ed with alum; that our coffee was chcory
and beans, our tea copperas and birch
twigs, our wine chiefly sulphuric acid and
logwood, and our beer Cocculus iudicHs.
AS for the meat sold in our markets, it
! was for the most part as unwholesome as
our pure Orange County milk furnished
by distillery-fed cows, and man actual
~ took his life in his hands who ventur-
ed to eat pork
Curjously enough, we continue to ,on-
sumo adulterated groceries and deadly
butchers meat, and still live. We ought
ell to have wasted away long ago, or to
have died with the g horrid pains " as
snrtnI Nv lIr NoD+,I;,,; l. IL
from poisoning. It's barely possible that
the fact that onr drugs are grossly adul.
terated is the only thing that has saved
us. The adulteration of drugs is conduct
ed on different principle from the adul-
teration of food. The drugs being for
the most part poisons. are adulterated
with harmless substances. The effect of
this is to reduce their strength. The man
who tancIeS that lie is taking six grains
OF quinine is really taking only one, and
when doctor prcscI ibes an ounce OF Ep-
som salts, the druggist furnishes only .
quarter of an ounce. the remainder of
the prescription being made up of inert
and irnocu"us substance. 1t may be that
by thus mitigating the character Of the
medicine given us by doctors ostcnsiblv
to cure diseases resulting from the use of
adulterated food, our lives have been pro
longed unintentionally by druggists whose
real and only purpose was to make money
by dishonest means.
The alarm concerning adulterated food
and drugs had somewhat subsidized prior
to the discovery that mankind was doom
ed to immediate extinction by sewer gas.
People, finding that they continued to
live in spite of this habit of daily poison
ing themselves with deadly food, We're
rapidly becoming careless as to how much
alum and C0ccHlas indicus they might
consume. When, however, they found
that sewer gas was killing them with the
swittnesS and certainty of prussic acid,
they became seriously alarmed. The
doctors who made the discovery that all
the ills of life were directly traceable to
bad drainage, and that good drainage and
immunity from sewer gas were absolutely
unknown, told the most terrible tales of
the condition of our houses. Our wretch
ed system of plumbing was such that
every city house was perpetual reser-
voir of sewer Gas, while bad drainage was
poisoning not merely the air, but the
earth. i'll every country town. We must
all infalHhiy die either of diphtheria or
typhoid terri; and as for our children. it
was simply absurd to think that they
could survive their first year when con-
stantly exposed to the deadly sewer gas
There is no doubt that those sanitary
apostles Were III earnest. Indeed, drain
age became passion " it'll them, and the.
devoted All their energies to convincing
us that il We had drains connected with
our houses, we woula promptly die of
dirhtheria, and that if we had no drains
typhoid fever would surely hurry us out
of the world.
Nevertheless, we still live. People
who had inhabited houses before sewer
gas ever attracted attention, and who had
never thought of contracting diphtheria
or typhoid foyer, resolved to risk the
sewer gas a little longer, and actually
centrived to live and preserve their health.
Less reckless people, gathering from the
writings of sanitary apostles that it was
almost hopeless to secure immunity from
bad drainage unless despotic govern
ment should undertake to drain the count
ry by force, resigned themselves to their
fate. There is nothing more certain than
that we ought all to have died Of diseases
resulting from sewer gas and bad drain
age long ago; but as We failed to die to
any great extent in the way and manner
prescribed by sanitary apostles, it is pro-
bable that the dead of sewer gas, like
the dread of adulterated food, will before
very long cease to greatly alarm the pub
lie.
Our last cause of alarm is malaria. The
subtle poison which was formerly found
only in swampy regions has now spread
over the entire country. The uplands of
New Jersey and the granite hills of New
England are full of it. We cannot escape
it, whether we live in the city or the
country. If it does not kill us outright
and suddenly by producing what are call
ed " con9eStive chill" it kills us none the
less surely with intermittent aud remit.
tent levers, and with dozen other dis
eases that fastens upon us in consequence
of the undermining of our constitutions
by malaria poison. We have miraculous
ly escaped poisoning by adulterated food,
we have managed in a perfectly inexpli-
cable way to live in spite of sewer gas
and bad drainage, but there is-if we
may believe the uoctors-not one chance
in Thousand that we can escape the sub
tie and fatal poisoning of both mind and
body due to malaria.
After all, malaria may not prove to be
quite 50 deadly rs we are told that it is.
May it not be possible that few of the
diseases which are now asciibed to it,
and some of the symptoms which are
held to be proofs of malarial poison, have
an entirely different origin? However
this may be, we have lived SO long in
spite of the demonstrations that we
ought to die that we may reasonably
hope that the human race will not be ex-
tirpated by malaria, at least within the
present generation.