The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-11-10
INCREASED DURATION OF LIFE.

average duration of human life is Slowly
increasing. Statistics show that the
median age in 1900 was 22.S years as
against 21.s years in 1890. BY the me-
dian is meant the age which divides
the population into equal parts-so
! many under it and the same number
over it. The causes of this increase,
! an increase which has been noticed
for about forty years past in all civil
lied countries, are not far to seek.
In the first place We must consider
the remarkable advance in medical sci
! ence since the discovery of ether which
! gave surgery the potent aid of anaes-
thetics. Not SO many a ago a man
! needed a pretty fair constitution to sur
! vive a doctor and an exceedingly ro-
bust one to cope with a surgeon. Now
the proportion of cures in all the hos
pitfalls is appreciably greater than it
was ten years ago., to say nothing of
of the ''old fashioned practice" Edu-
Gated physicians and surgeons are able
to do things which, in comparatively
recent years, they themselves would
have deemed impossible. IF we had
known the X-ray," said DR.. Shrady,
1--WE could have saved the life of Pres
ident Garfield" The value of this dis
covery is now being shown wen in the
treatment of cancer. The germ theory,
of electrical devices ali these things
are doing their part in warding off dis
Ease and lengthening the span of hui
man life.
Next in Importance is the growth of
public respect for hygiene. 1t is no
longer the custom in country villages
and even or farms, to build houses
without some arrangements for bath
ing. The writer personally knows of
a prosperous village of an Eastern State
where, twenty.years ago, there was not
a single bath tub. Now this purifying
agent is the rule there rather than the
exception. Science has also applied
itself to ventilation, and new houses
and many old one get the benefit of
it. In the matter of the choice and
preparation of food, things have also
been looking up. Cooking schools; new
recipes in the papers; increased travel,
taking people from small places where
cooking is hasty and poor to large ones
where cooking is regarded as a fine
art; the wider distribution of food by
rail, giving each little place a variety
to choose from; the prevalence of
cheap, but wholesome canned fruit,
which enables a family to tone it's sys-
TENS up with fruit acids when fresh
fruit is out of the market; the gradual
eliminating of fried meats and soggy
biscuit; the introduction of health
foods and a lessening in the per capita
bulk of food consumed; the teaching of
health laws in the schools and the Of
fetal inspections of meat and milk and
4'tIlcI Minus VI pIoNChQCl -oh 7
things have told for better health and
longer life. To the general credit of
hygiene must be added the abandon
ment of the old method of putting wells
and cesspools close together.
Nor must the cult of the athlete be
forgotten. A hundred years ago the
typical undergraduate of the college
and high school vas a pale and spec
tacled youth with narrow shoulders
and a Dubious forehead. So he was six
ty years ago. About 1880 the fashion
among women was to cultivate the
manners and tastes and if possible the
anaemic look of the invalid; and the
reigning beauty was the pallid young
woman with shoulders sloping like a
steep roof. Forty years later she was
cultivating the highest of stays, the
highest Of heels and the bizarre figure
called the "Grecian bend" Now the
spirit of college people, men and wo-
men alike, is in the direction of a
SOUND BODY as well as a SOUND mind and
the h~ealth-seeking habit is spreading
outside the scholastic walls. The stoop-
shouldered young man and the bloodless
young oma are not approved any
more; society want the massive struc-
ture and the rounded curves. Gradual
ly we are building up a race which may
compare physically with the ancient
Greeks-the polo playing, bicycling,
~footbahing, yachting, golfing and pc
destrian ace which already is moving
the median line up another notch. It
ought to be possible within the twen-
tieth century to add measurably to the
number of people who are hale at
eighty ana not wholly incapacitated at
ninety.