Repairing choked-up gutters, draining stagnant marshes, fumigating and isolating, scattering oil on the still waters, he is speedily and relentlessly exterminating this enemy of mankind. Yellow fever and malarias will become shortly things of the past, as the warfare, at present of necessity limited to the neighbourhood of the cities, is extended through all the waste places of the world. And if the discussion passes from the prevention to the cure, here also the sanguine dream of our fathers might seem in process of realisation. We can treat the tortured human body as Brutus wished to treat the condemned Cæsar--“Carve it as a dish fit for the gods,” and still preserve life and ensure recovery. First in antiseptic, then in aseptic surgery, we have discovered a method of safe operation, under which death would have been inevitable a few years ago. Gambetta perished in early manhood, because the doctors were afraid of an operation from which to-day over ninety per cent. of the patients recover. Opiates and anæsthetics, combined with the agile use of the knife, have eliminated on the one hand an almost inconceivable burden of pain, on the other have rendered possible a tearing and lacerating of the frail physical human body which would have seemed incredible to our predecessors. Nor can any one imagine that we are anywhere but in infancy in this particular progress. If, as eminent physiologists assert, the nerves of pain are distinct from the nerves of sensation or volition, it may be found possible to compound some subtle drug which will blockade these particular channels of communication, and render mankind henceforth completely immune from the pangs of physical suffering.