We wish Sir Joseph Lister had added his opinion as
to the general result of these discoveries upon human welfare. So far as they secure health and diminish the sum-total of pain they must be purely beneficial, for health must improve both the brain and the moral nature, while the pain caused by disease or injury is so intermittent a disagreeable in life that it can hardly help much to develop fortitude. On the other hand, every great advance in healing tends to increase the numbers of mankind, which is by no means a good without alloy, and to protect the diseased, whose weaknesses are banded down from generation to generation. A race without curatives would be weeded out of those liable to mortal disease, a result which seems actually to have occurred in the case of some negro tribes as regards miasmatic disease, and in the ease of Jews as regards disease from over-crowding. One would like to know a little more certainly than at present whether an average well-to-do Londoner or Parisian or a Chinese peasant was the healthier man through life. The Mongol is almost certainly freer both from miasmatic liability and injury from the shock of operations. The doctor's duty is clear and is admirably described by Sir Joseph Lister, but one would like to be a little more assured of the total result of curative surgery and medicine upon the future of mankind.
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