Genre:

Essay

Subjects:

Disease, Medical Treatment, Futurism, Progress, Prognostication

    Suggests that it 'seems not unreasonable to hope that gradually there will be no such thing as any one disease for which there is neither alleviation nor cure'. Although the 'high pressure of civilization draw[s] on the constitution and nervous force of man in a greater and more terrible excess', the 'effect of civilization is not only more disease, but more science to meet disease, and the poison and the antidote go hand in hand'. It is, however, 'hazardous to pronounce' whether the 'discovery of remedies will keep pace with the number and variety of maladies'. (307)