As noted under another head, law-givers and public officials listen to and address their confrères, their colleagues and their constituents, at all times and in all places; from their homes, from public baths and from public conveyances; so that the Senator from Oregon may address at the same moment both Houses in the Capitol at Washington, while preparing in the intervals of his private business and local political matters, to make a campaign speech in the Mississippi Valley, without leaving the shores of the Pacific.
All new houses are monolithic and must be built from plans approved by the General Council of Architects. The law requires, under heavy penalties, that every building shall have a liberal and specified window-area, and be properly warmed and ventilated.
The new system of diffused daylight is by most preferred to electricity. The panels with which the walls and ceilings are covered, have a power of absorbing sunlight all day and giving it out at night, thus making the rooms pleasantly bright by night. All beds are enclosed in beautiful cabinets (connected with the general system of ventilation), so that one steps from a bright chamber into his comfortable sleeping-compartment, and there, lulled by sweet music, if he so wish it, sleeps the sleep of the happy dweller of 1943.
The compartments are warmed, as the occupants prefer, by warm air from the general supply, by electricity from the common central station, or by heating-gas manufactured at a distance from the city, and pumped through long miles of pipes to where it is needed.
The streets are lighted with a soft, well-diffused illumination, bright enough to enable reading from ordinary print, at any point. The electric wires which carry currents to supply the lamps, are invisible. Each house contributes its quota to the illumination, by electric glow-lamps over its doors and windows, so that the effect, upon a moonless night, is fairy-like.
The sea-board cities have salt water “laid on” for bathing purposes, street-washing and use at fires; although the methods of fire extinguishment have greatly changed for the better. Few fires are possible, and those are generally put out by chemical vapors, automatically discharged from pipes placed in every room and passage.
The results of paternal oversight as carried out by republican institutions, are most gratifying; the annual death-rate being reduced to about 7 per thousand in sections favored by Nature, and never exceeding 10, in the most crowded districts and those least blessed in climate.
Medical science and art no longer work blindly; no longer act hap-hazard.
The average life of man (largely, let it be said, due to the efforts of the life insurance companies in enforcing sanitary improvements and in fostering medical and surgical research), has been about doubled. Surgical operations which fifty years before were deemed chimerical or impossible are now, thanks to the improved anaesthetics and antiseptics at command, performed most frequently; so that laparotomy, the Caesarian operation, bone-grafting, removal of diseased portions of the brain and extirpation of the kidneys, and their replacement by those of the sheep or calf, are common and successful.
Acute disease is treated almost exclusively by heat, cold and electricity. The subcutaneous injections discovered, or rather foreshadowed, by Brown-Sequard, have been brought to such pitch of perfection that by their use the vigor of forty is maintained until eighty or even ninety years. The noble work of Koch in subjugating pulmonary consumption has rendered that dread disease no longer contagious, while brighter light upon the mode of living, and improvements in comfort at home and when travelling, have made safe for consumptives many climates in which formerly no one with predisposition to lung trouble could live. The sanitary precautions enforced by local and National bodies have completely stopped and prevented the ravages of typhoid and other filth diseases; while the terrible effects of such epidemics as the grippe are made impossible in the face of the medical knowledge of the twentieth century.