That which we in our presumption are pleased to call civilization, should certainly further such aims for health, but the whole story of the world, of past and gone kingdoms, and of our own times also, show that civilization works up to a point of luxury that defeats and destroys itself. Babylon, Egypt, and Rome all testify to this end. These old civilizations perished, perhaps, more from enervating luxury and dissipation than from violence; though some of them gave way through feebleness, physical and mental, to a stronger, hardier race from without. In our own times there seems to loom the same danger, but the attack comes from another side. We neither eat nor drink to such excess as our forefathers, and we are not grossly luxurious or debauched, but the strain and the competition of life, both in professions and in business, has become so intense that our nervous systems break down long before their time. This produces rather a new type of an old disease. What is this disease but arterio-sclerosis?--a word which means only thickening of the arteries, but which, after fifty, in its far-reaching results destroys life and working capacity far more than cancer or any other disease. And this disease is, in the great majority of people, the result of the almost incessant nervous strain that seldom allows our hearts and our arteries, and especially the arteries of our brains, to get their proper quota of rest. Though the average duration of life has increased during the last fifty years, much of this is due to a lower mortality in infancy and childhood. There has been an actual increase in the mortality rate among males between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five. One-third of the total deaths in this period are due to diseases of the heart and blood vessels. In America it is stated to be 10 per cent. higher. If the causes of death in certificates were given more exactly, this proportion would be without doubt still greater. These deaths cannot be fairly brought under the heading “Old age.” This is what we die of! According to our death certificates we die of paralysis, of strokes, of Bright’s disease, of softening of the brain, of cardiac degeneration, of angina pectoris, but in nearly every case the foundation, the _causa causans_ is arterial disease. Sir Clifford Allbutt, in his distinctive way, says:-- “We recognize now, all of us, that, in the lapse of men’s years, one long reckoning of his mortality is, and from all known ages has been, written on the walls of his vessels. We may suppose that in the primitive man, by external conditions if not by innate capacity, life was of comparatively brief duration. Domestic animals seem, as a rule, not to live long enough to use up their arteries or not to live ill enough to abuse them, and amongst these creatures atheroma, though not unknown, has not been commonly observed. We may reasonably conjecture that, as in Stable Societies human life became protracted, the arteries got time to wear out.”