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But let it be remembered as comfort, exhortation, and warning to us that the greatest army of laboratory workers ever financed by a twentieth-century millionaire, would have been of no avail if the parents of the babies of the world had not taken to scalding the milk-bottles. Let us insist upon the recognition of our merit, such as it is. We will not, apparently we cannot, do the hard, consecutive, logical, investigating thinking which is the only thing necessary in many cases to better the conditions of our daily life; but we are not entirely impervious to reason, inasmuch as the world has seen us in this instance following, with the most praiseworthy docility, the teachings of those who have thought for us. The milk-bottles in by far the majority of American homes are really being scalded to-day; and “cholera morbus,” “second summers,” “teething fevers,” and the like are becoming as out-of-date as “fever ’n’ ague,” “galloping consumption,” and the like.

The lessened death-rate among babies is not only the most heartening spectacle for lovers of babies, but for hopers and believers in the general advancement of the race. This miraculous revolution in the care of infants under a year of age has taken place in less than a human generation. The grandparents of our children are still with us to pooh-pooh our sterilizings, and to look on with bewilderment while we treat our babies as intelligently as stock-breeders treat their animals. Let us take heart of grace. If scientific methods of physical hygiene in the care of children can be thus quickly inculcated, it is certainly worth while to storm the age-old redoubts sheltering the no less hoary abuses of their intellectual and spiritual treatment.