A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an OptimistRussell, T. Baron
Philosophy
A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an Optimist
Russell, T. Baron
Forecasting; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
Although comparatively little progress has been made by the curative
use of rays, other discoveries, of which we have even now passed the
brink, will have an enormous effect on medicine and surgery. Already
certain kinds of light cure rodent ulcer, one of the most hideous and
terrible diseases, not by the importation of fresh substances into the
body but by the modification of the tissues themselves. When radiation
has been fully studied it will almost certainly be found that the
sun, which is the source of practically all terrestrial activity,
has been showering upon us, ever since the homogeneous vapour which
was the birth-stuff of the universe aggregated itself into worlds and
suns and planets, rays which are capable of correcting every sort of
disease-germination and, properly used, of preventing it. The absolute
deadliness of unmodified sunlight to many sorts of disease-germs is
recognised already. The value of sun-baths--the exposure of the whole
body, undraped or only lightly covered, to the sunlight--is already
discussed in connection with anæmia, chlorosis and the early stages
of consumption. When we know just where all disease originates,
and why it develops, it seems likely that sunlight and oxygen its
child will prevent nearly all disease and cure whatever disease
accidentally arises. In place of temporary and dangerous expedients
like antiseptics, serum and corrective poisons, we shall import nothing
into the human organism, but only exclude what ought to be kept out,
and modify into innocuousness what has found its way in.
A great part of the disease we call constitutional, as distinguished
from infective, arises from food, either because the food itself is
not free from disease, or because, from excess in quantity or error
in choice, the food we take sets up the production of poisons in the
course of digestion, and by yielding, for instance, lactic or uric
acid to the blood causes rheumatism or gout, or by introducing into
the stomach matter in a state of incipient decay, favours typhoid
and other fevers.
When, for reasons already indicated, animal food has been eliminated
from the menu one great source of disease will have been got rid of.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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