Fisher adds[127] that in the United States the general death rate has steadily fallen for several decades, as is common in all civilized countries. Many think this means a gain in national vitality. This may be true for the younger age but the “gain has served to mask a loss of vitality at the older age periods. This latter phenomenon, a rising mortality in elderly life, is something almost peculiar to the United States.” In other lands this fall in death rate has been due not solely to the reduction of mortality in infancy and adult life, for most countries have improved their mortality at every age period. Probably this is due to “some unknown biologic influence or to the amalgamation of the various races that constitute our population. It must be ascribed in a broad sense to lack of adaptation to our rapidly developing civilization.” The American decreases in younger ages are not as great as in England and Wales and they change into increase at about the age of forty-five and continue to increase thereafter, while in England and Wales the decline occurs at all ages. In 1900 or thereabouts the death rates in the middle ages of life were heavier in the United States than in Prussia, France, Italy, and Sweden. Since then death rates in the United States at these ages have grown even greater. Better hygienic methods, according to Fisher,[128] started with Pasteur, who said it was within the power of man to rid himself of every parasitic disease. Hygienists have followed this clue. The Roosevelt Conservation Committee in its report on national vitality and the summary of European life tables show that human life lengthened during the 17th and 18th centuries at the rate of only 4 years per century, while during the first three-quarters of the 19th it lengthened almost twice as fast and since that four times as fast, or about 17 years per century. If we could continue to increase life seventeen years a century, the world would soon be peopled with Methuselahs. We are witnessing a race between two tendencies, the reduction of the acute infections, such as typhoid, and an increase of the chronic or degenerative diseases, such as sclerosis, Bright’s disease, etc. The degenerative tendency appears more in evidence here than elsewhere. In Sweden the expectation of life increases at all ages. Even the nonagenarians have more years to live than did those of former days in the United States. We are freer from germs than our ancestors but our vital organs wear out sooner. And this degeneration of our bodies follows that of our habits. In England, where these diseases are not increasing, individual exercise out of doors probably has something to do with it. In Sweden individual hygiene is better cultivated than anywhere else in the world. It is the only land where public health includes private habits and touches the life of the people, especially through the school. The best statistics show that a